PRIORITY SUPPORT NEEDS ON SDG IMPLEMENTATION IN ECA WITH OPTIONS FOR AUGMENTING REGIONAL COOPERATION
1. Integration
(prioritization,
adaptation, planning,
advocacy)
Policy & Programme Coherence: Bridging
global to national (norms, guidance,
initiatives) and Imparting Regional Imprint
1. GIVE RESONANCE TO SDGs:
 Build a narrative tailored to MICs/ECA
region aimed at Government, other key
actors and the public.
 Package SDGs to align with EU accession
ambitions.
Leveraging System-Wide Expertise, Brokering
Knowledge, & Facilitating Action
Working and Speaking as One
4. DEPLOY TECHNICAL AND NORMATIVE
CAPACITY
 Draw on reservoir of UNS knowledge to fill
capacity gaps at country-level to support
national consultations on each SDG and
corresponding targets.
6. MAINTAIN FOCUS ON
TRANSFORMATIONAL VISION OF SDG
AGENDA
 Avoid excessively technocractic and
compliance-focused approaches that
would potentially overwhelm and
alienate Government counterparts.
How Can Regional Level Help?
How Can Regional Level Help?
 Develop a Regional Advocacy Programme
on the relevance of the SDGs to people’s
lives and contexts, inclusive of compelling
stories.
 Agencies should prepare consolidated and
easily accessible technical support
packages (including surge deployments).
How Can Regional Level Help?
5. FOSTER PEER EXCHANGE AND COLLECTIVE
LEARNING
2. BUILD POLITICAL WILL
 Create multi-stakeholder vehicles for the
 Use SDGs as platform for advocacy,
dissemination of good practices,
especially on potentially “sensitive” issues
experience and idea-sharing and practical
i.e. equality, human rights, governance,
trouble-shooting.
including data transparency etc.)
How Can Regional Level Help?
How Can Regional Level Help?
 Consistently reinforce message on
balanced, inclusive development in every
bi- and multi-lateral engagement with MS
by RDs.
 Create/facilitate “communities of practice”
(small meetings AND web-based
platforms), including UNCTs and national
counterparts (both Government and nonstate actors) around a sub-set of SDGs
 Consistent harmonized messaging by
all RDs to their staff.
7. PRESENT A UNITED FACE TO
GOVERNMENT & OTHER
STAKEHOLDERS: FURTHER
REINFORCE CULTURE OF
COOPERATION AND
EXPERIMENTATION AND ENABLE VIA
JOINT TOOLS AND PRACTICES
 Discourage the claiming of
“ownership” over “my SDGs” as
fundamentally antithetical to
integrated nature of 2030 Agenda.
 Step up commitment by all to
common programming mechanisms
(e.g. DAO/SOP One Programmes, to
3. CONTEXTUALIZE GLOBAL GUIDANCE
AND ADDRESSING “STICKY” QUESTIONS
 How to build an SDG implementation
roadmap (including sequencing).
 What are expectations on countries for
tackling the breadth of SDG agenda
(appropriate level of ambition across the
goals, as well as within them).
 How should SDGs be costed at national
level.
How Can Regional Level Help?
 Conduct review of MAPS, UNITAR
Modules (and other global guidance
when forthcoming e.g. re human rights,
universality etc.) from a regional
perspective and identify ways and
means/tools for tailoring to regional
context (this could be done by and SDGfocused PAG-type mechanism)
and/or sub-regions (could feed into
tailoring MAPS to regional needs).

which agencies must lend managerial,
technical and financial resources).
Empower UNCTs to find creative and
context-appropriate solutions, within
broad parameters of the SDG
Outcome Document, and global
guidance.
How Can Regional Level Help?
 Provide an updated understanding of
different agencies’ respective
approaches and spheres of action on
SDGs, establish clarity on division of
labor, identify opportunities for
synergy, and promote harmonized
approaches.
 Hold regional UN-wide dialogues on
key thematic priorities to drill down,
in planning and operational terms, on
how the UNS in ECA will achieve key
objectives.
 Build and expand on the very positive
experience with the PSG during the
2015 UNDAF Roll-Out Process by
establishing a mechanism such as the
PAG dedicated to timely provision of
support on SDG Implementation, with
clear leadership and focal point
structure.
 Intensify communication by all RDs of
joint guidance and key messages to
their field Representatives to ensure
uniformity of understanding.
8. ESTABLISH COMMON APPROACHES
AND COORDINATION MECHANISMS
AROUND THE “TRANSVERSAL” SDGs
 SDGs 1, 10, 16, 5, and 13 present
particular difficulties for UN systemwide alignment/division of
responsibilities among agencies.
9. ADAPT AND AUGMENT REGIONAL
COORDINATION STRUCTURES TO SDG
REQUIREMENTS
 Strategically add thematic groups on
priority regional challenges (mirroring
country-level arrangements); with
balanced leadership across all entities
and direct access by RCs/UNCTs to
the Working Group leads.
2. Partnerships and
Resource
Mobilization/Transfer
1. FINANCE NATIONAL SDG ACTION
 Support Government in domestic and
international resource mobilization and
evidence-based decisions on resource
allocation/budgeting.
How Can Regional Level Help?
 Use regional structures and convenings to
raise funds for multi-country thematic
SDG programmes;
 Deployment of capacity building support
in planning and RBM
 Promoting and enabling access to
innovative finance
3. PROMOTE MULTISTAKEHOLDER ISSUESBASED APPROACHES
 Transcend mandate-based approaches by
establishing at regional level multistakeholder thematic partnerships focused
on global and regional public goods,
possibly modelled after, and tapping into,
global issue coalitions (e.g. Every Woman,
Every Child and SE4A), and linked to
country level;
 identify modes of outreach and
engagement between the regional
coordination mechanisms and non-UN
partners.
 Facilitating and leveraging cross-border
private development financing flows
2. FINANCE UN SUPPORT TO SDG
IMPLEMENTATION

Meet resource requirements for a range
of UN activities, including awareness
raising, advocacy, localization, integrated
policy and programme design, the
disaggregation of and collection of
reliable data, establishment of genderresponsive monitoring systems, technical
support and capacity building, and multistakeholder engagement.
How Can Regional Level Help?
 Promote, create and manage pooled
funding mechanisms for SDG action in the
region.
 Promote cost-sharing for UN support of
SDG roadmaps and DaO/SOP One
Programmes.
3. Data, Monitoring,
Follow-Up and
Review
1. DEFINE NATIONAL INDICATORS AND
SETTING BASELINES
 Urgent guidance on flexibility of countries
in defining target and indicators (to
ensure comparability for assessment of
global progress).
 Given how inextricable dialogue on
targets is from the availability of
4. PROMOTE EAST-EAST (SOUTH-SOUTH) AND
TRIANGULAR COOPERATION
 Pool resources and knowledge through
partnerships between traditional donors,
emerging donors, and ODA recipients in
the ECA region.
5. GUIDANCE ON OPERATIONALIZING
PARTNERSHIPS AND LEVERAGING
 Clarity on expectation and parameters for,
and approaches to, working with the
private sector, and civil society, starting
with awareness-raising.
 Technical guidance on (and financial
support for) facilitation of multistakeholder dialogue and action platforms.
 Guidance on how to engage NGOs around
SDG 16 in complex political environments.
6. OPERATIONALIZE THE UNIVERSALITY
PRINCIPLE
 Unpack and clarify UN regional role in
engagement with countries with no
operational presence (for entities with
mandate to do so).
4. PROVIDE TECHNICAL SUPPORT
 Extensive capacity building needs exist on
data, measurement, monitoring and
review for government (national statistical
systems) and non-state actors, including
on innovations (e.g. real-time monitoring,
citizen-engagement, etc.).
5. HARMONIZE APPROACHES TO SDG
MEASUREMENT AND MONITORING
 Urgent need for joined-up approaches
when interfacing with respective line
ministries re SDGs measurement and
monitoring.
indicators, the Global SDG Indicator
Framework should be tapped into now,
with a focus on those areas where there
is agreement, rather than wait for full
panoply in March 2016.
2. PROVIDE METHODOLOGICAL GUIDANCE
 Guidance/clarification regarding
reporting requirements (including,
periodicity, mechanisms, etc.), and
provision of templates/integrated tools,
and capacity building support.
How Can Regional Level Help?
 DESA and UNECE in particular looked to
for the development of clear indicators
and methodological guidance on setting
baselines, assessing/building national
statistical capacity, etc.
 PSG could facilitate technical assistance in
defining national indicators and linking
these to UN planning and monitoring
frameworks.
3. ESTABLISH REVEW AND FOLLOW-UP
MECHANISMS
 Clarify expectations and systems for
review and follow-up at country level and
how these link to regional and global
processes.