Partnerships lie at the heart of the Commission’s mandates and work. ESCAP pursues partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders, which include governments at all levels, organizations within and outside the United Nations development system, multilateral development banks, academia, think tanks, civil society organizations and the private sector. ESCAP promotes partnerships modalities tailored to the needs of individual partners, including through the Memorandum of Understanding or the Memorandum of Agreement, where a partnership does not entail transfer of funds, or through a trust fund agreement, where a partnership involves  funds transfer. 
 

Examples of ESCAP partnerships include:  

• Partnerships in support of technical cooperation with different categories of development cooperation partners, including member States, which provide both financial and in-kind contributions to ESCAP; 
• Partnerships with United Nations development system entities, including facilitation of system-wide coherence through the newly established regional collaborative platform in Asia and the Pacific; 
• Partnerships with regional and subregional organizations, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Economic Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Commission and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC); 
• Partnerships with civil society, including through the Asia-Pacific Civil Society Forum on Sustainable Development; 
• Partnerships with the private sector, including through the ESCAP Sustainable Business Network and its associated task forces.
   

ESCAP’s approach to partnerships in based on:

• Shared priorities/interests: matching ESCAP’s strengths with partners priorities and members States needs
• Communication: regular informal and formal annual consultations
• Engagement: working together on project design, implementation and evaluation
• Accountability: performance and financial reporting
• Evaluation and learning: to ensure continuous improvement and better results.
   

We promote different partnership modalities tailored to the needs of individual partners, including:

• Framework agreements under memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and other partnership arrangements
• Direct contribution by the partner under a trust fund or special agreement
• Joint implementation of activities under an exchange of letters or separate agreement
   

ESCAP’s impact and efficiency has been improved through:

• Fewer, larger-scale, longer-term and better-integrated capacity development projects which are aligned with the overall priorities of ESCAP
• Impactful projects with the emphasis achieving tangible results through strengthened results-based management  
• Stronger focus on monitoring and evaluation to ensure the secretariat’s accountability to its member States, partners and the donor community, and to facilitate learning and ongoing improvement in performance.