SIDS Partnership Symposium: Advancing partnerships in support of the new Programme of Action for Small Island Developing States

On 19 and 23 February 2024, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), in collaboration with ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), will host a two-day Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Partnership Symposium as an associate event to the 2024 Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) 4, held at the United Nations Conference Center, Bangkok, Thailand.

The objectives of the “SIDS Partnership Symposium: Advancing partnerships in support of the new Programme of Action for Small Island Developing States” include:

1. Gather insights and perspectives from SIDS stakeholders on how the SIDS Partnership Framework can be improved in its upcoming phase to bolster implementation of SIDS priorities through partnerships in SIDS.
2. Explore how to enhance coalitions and partnerships on three key regional SIDS priorities (as identified in the Praia (Cabo Verde) Declaration), including through financing, technological innovation, data, capacity development, trade initiatives, and statistics.
3. Foster peer learning and exchange of knowledge among stakeholders in building effective collaborations for SIDS.

In our endeavor to gather comprehensive insights and expertise from all stakeholders, we’ve created a survey which will inform the outputs of this process. We strongly encourage participants of the Symposium and other stakeholders to contribute their perspectives through this survey.

Please note that all questions are optional, allowing you to skip those that may not be relevant or of interest to you. We appreciate your participation and encourage you to take the survey in its entirety or partially. You can access it here: https://forms.office.com/e/zMjMMv8Je1    

The Symposium will contribute to the development of two outputs, which will be submitted to the Steering Committee on SIDS Partnerships for further consideration.

1. Recommendations on how the SIDS Partnership Framework can effectively be strengthened in the new programme of action for SIDS.
2. Assessment of requirements for scaling up development of partnerships on select priority areas, including mapping of key actors and initiatives, required resources, capacity building and technology transfer, deliverables, and impact. Next steps would envision organizing dedicated roundtable discussions with donors and interested actors to scale up collaboration in these three priority areas.

Lily Bosen Liu, Lead on Young People on Transforming Education Project at UNESCO IESALC will participate in the Priority area 3: Higher Education and SIDS – A brown bag lunch event, from 12.45 PM to 01.30 PM (Thailand time, GMT+7). The round table will be moderated by Ola Goransson, Sustainable Development Officer, Division for SDGs, and co-chair of the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative.

Access the concept note.