Creating shared prosperity

UNIDO concentrates its efforts on the development of agro-industries, increasing the participation of women and youth in productive activities, and human security in post-crisis situations. The Organization's services for the development of agro-industries focus on adding value to agricultural production by strengthening linkages between agriculture, industry and markets.

UNIDO supports the transformation of enterprises from the informal sector to the formal sector, with a special focus on simplifying and improving access to administrative company registration services. It also strives to improve women's participation in entrepreneurial activities. Based on its experience in post-crisis and human security programmes and projects, UNIDO responds to complex emergencies through activities that contribute to socio-economic as well as environmental and energy security both at national and local level.

Advancing economic competitiveness

UNIDO supports programmes towards investment and technology promotion, SME development, trade capacity building, and entrepreneurship development.

UNIDO provides advisory services to improve the business and policy environment for the private sector, assisting with the creation of productive capacities. Its programmes support investment and technology opportunities to help enterprises, especially SMEs, improve productivity and innovation, and achieve systemic competitive advantages. Building on a robust global network aimed at fostering investment, technology and other partnership opportunities, UNIDO seeks to enable SMEs to capitalize on their unique dynamism and flexibility by strengthening synergies among enterprises and with support institutions.

In the context of trade capacity-building programmes, UNIDO strengthens international trade norms and standards by assisting developing countries and transition economies in upgrading production and processing systems to enhance the quality of local products, in particular through the adoption of improved technologies, and help them conform to the standards required by international markets. UNIDO builds capacities in both public and private institutions to formulate trade policies and strategies based on economic and statistical analysis, as well as benchmarking competitive performance at sectoral and product levels and supporting the establishment of trade-related databases such as inventories of technical barriers to trade (TBT), which are designed to expand exports from the industrial sector.

Safeguarding the environment

UNIDO-ISEC (International Solar Energy Center) headquarters in Lanzhou, China

UNIDO supports countries in their environmental management efforts, including the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements and the provision of sustainable energy. It helps create new green industries, establishing national road maps for greening the supply chain, determining benchmarks and indicators, disseminating and sharing best practices, running clean technology programmes, undertaking various capacity-building exercises and contributing to international forums with the necessary research and expertise.

The Organization's services include capacity building, direct technical support to enterprises and assistance to government institutions on Cleaner Production (CP) policy matters, as well as the promotion, adaptation and transfer of environmentally sound technologies and the implementation of advanced CP business models, such as chemical leasing.

Strengthening knowledge and institutions

Strengthening knowledge and institutions is a prioritized outcome that is elevated over other high-level results. It describes the organization's strategic direction towards strengthening the knowledge base for ISID at the project, programme, country and international level, as well as the institutional capacity at the technical, policy and normative level.

Origins

ONUDI in French and Spanish

The origins of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) can be traced to a series of studies on a programme of rapid industrialization of developing countries that the United Nations Secretariat carried out during the early 1950s at the request of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). These studies culminated in a programme of work on industrialization and productivity prepared by the United Nations Secretary-General in 1956 and endorsed the next year by ECOSOC and the General Assembly. At that time, it was first suggested that a special body to deal with the problems of industrialization be established, whose political organs could relieve ECOSOC and the General Assembly of the detailed consideration of those questions and whose secretariat could carry out more substantive work than the existing Industry Section of the Bureau of Economic Affairs within the Secretariat. The Industry Section of the Secretariat became a branch in 1959, and in 1962 it became the Industrial Development Centre, headed by a Commissioner for Industrial Development.

Special organ of the United Nations

In the aftermath, proposals for further institutionalizing industrial development-related issues within the UN were considered by various advisory groups and inter-organizational organs. Subsequently, the United Nations General Assembly created the UNIDO in November 1966 as a special organ of the United Nations.^[13] In January 1967, the Organization was formally established with headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Compared to the Industrial Development Centre, UNIDO's creation was intended to broaden the work of its predecessor. Besides normative activities, such as acting as a forum for discussions, analytical functions and information dissemination, UNIDO became involved in operational activities, i.e. in technical co-operation activities.

Conversion into a specialized agency

The setting up of UNIDO as a special organ had nonetheless been a compromise solution. The developing countries (the Group of 77) had in the first instance promoted the idea of a specialized agency with its own political decision-making governing bodies and autonomy in budgetary matters. The same position was advocated by several high-level expert groups and intergovernmental committees during the following years. In the context of the General Assembly's adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, UNIDO's second General Conference, held in 1975 in Lima, Peru, adopted the Lima Declaration on Industrial Development and Cooperation.^[14] For the first time, industrial development objectives were quantified internationally — the Lima Target anticipated the developing countries to attain a twenty-five per cent share of world industrial production by the year of 2000. As part of the institutional arrangements of the Lima Plan of Action, and with a view to assisting in the establishment of a New International Economic Order, it was recommended to the General Assembly that UNIDO be converted into a specialized agency.

An intergovernmental committee prepared a draft constitution, which was adopted in Vienna in 1979. However, the objections and doubts of industrialized countries as to the necessity of a specialized agency contributed to delaying the ratification process. In order to ensure that the new organization would start up with a membership including substantially all significant States, the General Assembly, by resolutions adopted in 1982 and 1984, called for a series of formal consultations among prospective Member States, which eventually led to a general agreement that the new UNIDO Constitution should enter into force. All necessary formal requirements were fulfilled in 1985, and in December of the same year, UNIDO finally became the sixteenth Specialized Agency of the United Nations with headquarters in Vienna.

Crisis and reform during the 1990s

During the subsequent years, UNIDO continuously expanded particularly its operational activities. However, several developments outside and inside the Organization led to a crisis, which reached a breaking point in 1997 when UNIDO faced the risk of closure: After the end of the Cold War and the triumph of the market economic system over the command economic system, and in view of the Washington Consensus that limited the role of industrial policy in economic development processes, some Member States felt that industrial development could be supported more effectively and efficiently by the private sector. As a result, Canada, the United States (UNIDO's then largest donor), and Australia subsequently withdrew from the Organization between 1993 and 1997.^[15] Simultaneously, the continued slowdown in the economies of some major industrialized countries as well as the financial turmoil of the 1997 Asian financial crisis caused multilateral development assistance to decline. In addition, a weak management structure and lack of focus and integration of UNIDO's activities contributed to aggravating the crisis.

UNIDO's Member States responded by adopting a stringent Business Plan on the Future Role and Functions of the Organization in June 1997. Activities laid out in the Business Plan are based on the clear comparative advantages of UNIDO, while avoiding overlap and duplication with other multilateral institutions. A key point was that activities should be integrated into packages of services, rather than being provided on a stand-alone basis. The Organization radically reformed itself on the basis of this business plan and streamlined its services, human and financial resources as well as internal processes during the following years.

Post-reform role

On the basis of sound finances and in a second wave of programmatic reforms in 2004, UNIDO further focused its activities and technical services directly responding to international development priorities. In an independent assessment of 23 international organizations against a large numbers of criteria, UNIDO was assessed 6th best overall and as best in the group of specialized agencies.^[16] In regard of the current UN Reform debate, it can be observed that UNIDO is actively contributing to UN system-wide coherence and cost efficiency.

Membership

  Members, List A

  Members, List B

  Members, List C

  Members, List D

  former parties

Members of the UN, or of UN specialized agencies, or of the IAEA, are eligible for membership with UNIDO.^[17] The process of becoming a Member of the Organization is achieved by becoming a party to the Constitution. Observer status is open, upon request, to those enjoying such status in the General Assembly of the United Nations, unless the UNIDO General Conference decides otherwise. The Conference has the authority to invite other observers to participate in the work of the Organization in accordance with the relevant rules of procedure and the provisions of the Constitution.

As of 1 April 2019, 170 States are Members of UNIDO,^[18][19] all of them being UN members. UNIDO Members are divided into four lists.^[20] List A consists of all UNIDO countries in the African + Asian Groups of UN (along with Israel, while excluding Cyprus and Japan). List B consists of all UNIDO countries in WEOG group of UN (along with Cyprus and Japan, and excluding Israel). List C consists of all UNIDO countries in GRULAC group of UN. List D consists of all UNIDO countries in the Eastern European group of UN.

The lists, originally defined in General Assembly resolution 2152 Archived 5 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine and the UNIDO Constitution Archived 2 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine serve to balance geographical distribution of member states' representation on the Industrial Development Board^[21] and the Programme and Budget Committee.^[22]

UNIDO is the one of the two UN specialized agencies where members are separated into groups while the other is IFAD. UNIDO List B, is similar to IFAD List A – which comprises primarily developed countries,^[23] while the set of the rest of UNIDO members is similar to the set of the rest of IFAD members – which comprise primarily developing countries.^[23]

The full lists are as follows:

List A (100 members): Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Comoros, Congo, Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, North Korea, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, State of Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Qatar, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

List B (21 members): Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey.

List C (32 members): Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela.

List D (20 members): Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia (denounced, effective 31 December 2017), Slovenia, Ukraine.

Signatory states that have not finished their ratification procedures are: Antigua and Barbuda (1982).^[19]

Former UNIDO members are^[24] Australia (1985–97, List B),^[25] Belgium (1985–2015, List B), Canada (1985–93, List B),^[25] Denmark (1985-2016, List B), France (1985–2014, List B), Greece (1985–2016, List B), Lithuania (1991–2012, List D),^[20] New Zealand (1985–2013, List B), Portugal (1985–2014, List B), Slovakia (1993-2017), United Kingdom (1985–2012, List B),^[20] and the United States (1985–96, List B).^[25]

Other UN member states that have never signed, ratified, or denounced the constitution are Andorra, Brunei, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, San Marino, Singapore, Solomon Islands, and South Sudan.

The Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta have observer status with UNIDO.^[26]

Policy-making organs

The policy-making organs (or governing bodies) of UNIDO are based on their predecessors that were effective prior to UNIDO becoming a specialized agency. Thus, the General Conference, the Industrial Development Board (IDB) and the Programme and Budget Committee (PBC) are anchored in the Constitution.

Substantive decisions of the policy-making organs are generally taken by consensus. A vote takes place when no consensus can be reached or on specific request of a member of the policy-making organ^[27]

Secretariat

The Secretariat of UNIDO is based in Vienna (Austria) and maintains representative offices in Brussels (Belgium), Geneva (Switzerland) and New York City (USA). As of 2013, UNIDO's organizational structure comprises^[30] The Office of the Director-General (ODG), the Programme Development and Technical Cooperation Division (PTC), the Office of the Deputy to the Director General (DDG), the Programme Support and General Management Division (PSM) as well as offices of Internal Oversight and Legal Services.

The current Director-General of UNIDO is Gerd Müller (since December 2021).

Field representation

UNIDO's system of field representation includes four categories of offices:

• Regional offices, which cover the country of their location as well as a number of countries in the same region, in which the Organization assumes the status of a non-resident agency
• Country Offices, which cover their host country
• Focal point offices maintained within national governments
• UNIDO Desks in UNDP offices.

Technical offices at country level

In order to provide additional support to UNIDO's technical activities, different types of technical offices have been established. These include:

• Investment and Technology Promotion Offices (ITPOs), which promote investment and technology flows to developing countries and countries with economies in transition, being financed by their host countries
• International Technology Centres, which act as catalysts for technology upgrading and assist in managing technology change
• In collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UNIDO set up a global network of National Cleaner Production Centres (NCPCs), aiming at building national capacities in clean production technologies, fostering dialogue between industry and government and enhancing investments for transfer and development of environmentally sound technologies.
• UNIDO's Industrial Subcontracting and Partnership Exchanges (SPX) facilitate production linkages between small, medium and large manufacturing firms and link up with global markets and supply chain networks.
• UNIDO Centres for South-South Cooperation as part of a major UNIDO South-South cooperation initiative in several of the more advanced developing countries.