The convening power of UNCTAD

The UN brings the world together to advance sustainable development and inclusive trade and economy for all. Important for a better future for people and the planet, it cannot be realized without increased and effective cooperation of all stakeholders at all levels -—
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—-. UNCTAD uses its convening power to bring together governments, businesses, civil society, academia and other international organizations. Together they debate, exchange experiences, identify best practices, and develop global standards on the most pressing issues of the day. Most of these meetings and events take place at UNCTAD headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.¹

By doing so, UNCTAD supports SDGSustainable Development Goal 17 “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development” at its targets 17.16 “Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries” and 17.17 “Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships”.

Since 2014 and up until April 2022, UNCTAD held 1508 formal meetings. This only includes formal meetings registered in the ‘Indico’ conference management system. More than half of these meetings were not categorized². These statistics only cover meetings and events organised by UNCTAD at its headquarters in Geneva. Many other meetings organised by UNCTAD at the regional or national level, outside Geneva, are not counted.

Due to the COVID-19COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the strain of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 discovered in December 2019. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses which may cause illness in animals or humans. In humans, several coronaviruses are known to cause respiratory infections ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The most recently discovered coronavirus causes coronavirus disease COVID-19 -—
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—-. pandemicCommonly described by the WHO as ‘the worldwide spread of a new disease’, no strict definition is provided. In 2009, they set out the basic requirements for a pandemic: • New virus emerges in humans
• Minimal or no population immunity
• Causes serious illness; high morbidity/mortality
• Spreads easily from person to person
• Global outbreak of disease.
The US Centre for Disease Control uses a similar approach, but with a reduced set of criteria. It is very difficult to gauge whether the spread of a disease should be termed an outbreak, epidemic or pandemic. In other words, when to declare a pandemic isn’t a black and white decision -—
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—-., all physical meetings on the UNCTAD premises were put on hold in March 2020. UNCTAD has been able to react quickly to these novel circumstances organising and hosting a myriad of online events, consultations and webinars from spring 2020. However, the number of in-person events held in 2020 halved from 2019, and in 2021 only one third were left. Prior to 2020, no online or hybrid events were registered at ‘Indico’ conference management system, but the share of such events reached 11 per cent in 2020 and stayed stable throughout 2021. Over the first four months of 2022, 5 per cent of UNCTAD events registered in ‘Indico’ occurred online or in a hybrid form. However, most UNCTAD online events do not feature in ‘Indico’. In 2020-2021, the majority of UNCTAD events were held virtually.

Since 2016, for when data on participants are available, almost 59 000 participants have attended more than 1200 events (see table 1). This is an underestimate because not all meetings in IndicoIntegrated Digital Conferencing (Indico) is an open-source web-based tool for event management system developed and maintained at -—
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—-. In this publication, Indico.UN refers to the event registration system of the United Nations based on CERN Indico and managed by the United Nations Office at Geneva -—
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—-. system required participants details to be registered. In fact, only about half of events had registration requiring participants’ details: e.g., 57 per cent in 2019, just above 50 per cent in 2020 and back up to 54 per cent in 2021.

The share of female participants has steadily increased in the period from about 38 per cent in 2016 up to 47 per cent in the first four months 2022. Overall female participation in the studied period has been 41 per cent (see table 1).

The meetings include ministerial and other high-level meetings, intergovernmental meetings, such as the TDBUNCTAD Trade and Development Board and its subsidiary bodies, the Working Party on strategic framework and programme budget, and fora, such as the Global Commodities Forum and e-CommerceSale or purchase of goods or services, conducted over computer networks by methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or placing of orders; it can involve business-to-business (B2B) or a business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions -—
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—-. Week. They also include study visits, seminars, short courses for diplomats and bilateral government visits, and internal UNCTAD events (see table 2).

Representatives from national governments are the single largest group attending UNCTAD meetings, accounting for between 35 per cent in 2016 and 53 per cent in 2022, depending on the year. Academia, the private sector and non-governmental organizations together accounted for between 23 and 47 per cent of participants in the same period. The number of these participants has dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic from 30 per cent in 2020 to 23 per cent in 2022 so far.

More than one third of participants did not record the country they represent, since they typically represented international organisations, NGOs, academia, or the private sector rather than countries. Of participants representing governments, from 2016 to 2022, about one third came from Africa. Asia and Oceania accounted for another one third of government representatives. Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe increased their relative presence in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic to around 19 per cent both from about 15 per cent. Representatives from North America accounted for just over half a per cent (see table 3). Such overall participation pattern is reflective of the number of countries in the regions, Africa and Asia and Oceania each having more than 50 countries, and, on the other hand, only a few countries present in North America.

The share of female government representatives has steadily increased from 32 per cent in 2016 to 44 per cent in 2022. Regional differences exist, with overall shares lower for Africa and Asia and Oceania, and higher in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and notably higher for North America with over 80 per cent in 2020-2021 (see table 3).

Notes

1. More information about the UNCTAD upcoming events and the UNCTAD meetings calendar are available online -—
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2. These statistics only cover meetings and events organized by UNCTAD at its headquarters in Geneva. Many other meetings organized by UNCTAD at the regional or national level, outside Geneva, are not counted. The data also do not include meetings co-organized by UNCTAD outside the Palais and do not include events where registration was not managed in Indico such as World Investment Forum 2018.

References

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