Overview
UNIDO believes that competitive and environmentally sustainable industry has a crucial role to play in accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The Organization therefore works towards improving the quality of life of the world's poor by drawing on its combined global resources and expertise in the following three interrelated thematic areas:
- Poverty reduction through productive activities;
- Trade capacity-building; and
- Energy and environment.
Activities in these fields are strictly aligned with the priorities of the current United Nations Development Decade and related multilateral declarations, and reflected in the long-term vision statement, business plan and mid-term programme frameworks of UNIDO.
In order to fulfill these objectives, UNIDO
- assists developing countries in the formulation of development, institutional, scientific and technological policies and programmes in the field of industrial development;
- analyzes trends, disseminates information and coordinates activities in their industrial development;
- acts as a forum for consultations and negotiations directed towards the industrialization of developing countries; and
- provides technical cooperation to developing countries for implementing their development plans for sustainable industrialization in their public, cooperative and private sectors.
UNIDO thus works largely in developing countries, with governments, business associations and individual companies. The Organization's "service modules" are Industrial Governance and Statistics, Investment and Technology Promotion, Industrial Competitiveness and Trade, Private Sector Development, Agro-Industries, Sustainable Energy and Climate Change, Montreal Protocol, and Environmental Management.
UNIDO was established as a UN programme in 1966 with headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1985.
In 2004, UNIDO established the UNIDO Goodwill Ambassador programme.
In 2010, UNIDO created two new flagship publications, Making It: Industry for Development and UNIDO Times.
Read more about this topic: United Nations Industrial Development Organization