Poverty Reduction

The Geneva-based Trade and Human Development Unit (THDU) works to enable UNDP to strengthen and scale up its substantive and management support to the Integrated Framework for Trade Related Technical Assistance (IF) for the Least Developed Countries (LDC’s), while strengthening institutional relationships with IF partner agencies.

The THDU also aims to ensure a better understanding of the link between trade and human development concerns, and to give it a much higher priority in Geneva trade discussions. To that end, the Unit will share UNDP's rich and growing country and regional experience on the trade and human development linkage, as well as its own concerns in this area, with policy makers in Geneva, ideally in cooperation with UNCTAD and other partners such as the South Centre. Having a presence in Geneva also allows UNDP to provide technical backstopping to its offices in Brussels and Copenhagen whose demands in this area have significantly grown in recent years.

The Unit also supports all of UNDP's IF and trade and human development interventions at country, regional and global levels, thereby strengthening UNDP's contribution to the achievement of the MDGs.