Asia-Pacific Regional Centre

Overview of Asia-Pacific Regional Centre

UNDP is the UN's global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of UNDP and our wide range of partners.

A main priority of the Regional Centres is to provide UNDP Country Offices in the Asia and the Pacific with easy access to knowledge through high quality advisory services based on global applied research and UNDP lessons learnt.

The second priority is to build partnerships and promote regional capacity building initiatives, which allow UNDP, governments and other development partners to identify, create and share knowledge relevant to solving urgent development challenges.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Centre mainly focuses on support to Democratic Governance Energy & Environment, Crisis Prevention and Recovery and Poverty REduction with an overarching effort on achieving the Millenium Development Goals and HIV/AIDS. The Centre also provide support to UNDP country offices in a number of cross-cutting areas, including capacity development, ICT for development, public-private partnerships and mine action.

The Regional Centre supports the network of 25 Country Offices in Asia-Pacfic by providing quality applied policy advice, facilitating networks of UNDP staff to build communities of practice, responding to queries, sharing information and applying regional and global perspectives. The system taps into UNDP's contacts with UN Agencies, the World Bank, professional networks, and academia to share knowledge and offer advice.

The Sub-Regional Resource Facility (SURF) system was introduced in 1997 as part of UNDP's decentralization of substantive support to sub-regional and regional levels. In January 2001, it was integrated into a revamped Bureau of Development Policy. The Bangkok SURF, with primary responsibility for East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, formally initiated its operations on 1 January 2001. Prior, it had served UNDP Country Offices in the RBAP region for five years, first as the SHD Resource Facility serving Southeast Asia (between 1996-98), and then as the Southeast Asia SURF, Northeast Asia SURF, and Pacific SURF (during 1999 and 2000). In 2003, the merger of SURFs with regional programmes in some regions has resulted in the establishment of regional centres. In Asia-Pacific this includes the Asia-Pacific Regional Centre located in Bangkok and a Pacific Sub-Regional Centre in Suva, Fiji providing dedicated support to country offices in the Pacific.

This web site intends to be a source of knowledge about development experiences, lessons learned and good practices in the region with particular focus on UNDP programmes and activities. Interested parties are invited to share with us documents and other intellectual resources they would like to share with a wider audience. Please write to us at: regionalcentrebangkok@undp.org.