UN, Government highlight achievements and draw lessons from the first year of 2021-2025 Cooperation Framework implementation

The members of the SC at the level of deputy ministers representing line ministries and Heads of UN Agencies drew the results and discussed the challenges and lessons learnt in the implementation of UNSDCF 2021 – 2025.

The Co-chair of the meeting from the national side, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan opened the meeting by reminding of the strategic nature of the UN-Government cooperation.

In his opening remarks, the UN Resident Coordinator thanked the Government for productive year and stressed that some areas needed further attention from the Government and UN, such as data gaps, lack of inter-sectoral coordination and prevailing of bilateral projects over the joint UN-Government initiatives.

He added: “As part of its core role of bringing together diverse stakeholders, providing development advice, promoting international best practices and ensuring that “no one is left behind”, the UN system is working in partnership with the Government of Turkmenistan to address key challenges and risks to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs”.

The participants were acquainted with the major achievements reflected in the Annual Results Report for 2021. The representative of the Ministry of Finance and Economy reported on the implementation of the CF Funding Framework and Resource Mobilization and Partnerships Strategy, while the partners from the State Statistics Committee briefed the SC members about the preparation to the nationwide Population and Household Census.

In the course of discussions, the participants were informed on the progress in reporting on the UNSDCF Outcome indicators as well as of the preliminary SDG mid-term review results paving the way for the preparation of the 2nd Voluntary National Review in 2023.

The Steering Committee concluded by approving the priorities of the joint cooperation for 2022.