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| TA Name | Capacity Building for Regional Cooperation | |||
| Country | Afghani., Is Rep. of | |||
| TA Number | 4758 | |||
| Project Number | 39651- 01 | |||
| Fund Source/Amount[Closed] |
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| Thematic Classification |
Capacity Development
Regional Cooperation Governance |
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| Project Outcome | ||
| Description of Outcome | Progress Toward Outcome | |
| Strengthened capacity for regional cooperation | AFRM is processing a request to extend the TA to March 2008 to support preparation for the 2008 Islamabad Regional Economic Cooperation Conference. | |
| Implementation Progress | ||
| Description of Project Outputs | Status of Implementation Progress (Outputs, Activities and Issues) | |
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Capacity-building assessment plan At the policy level
(i) Enhancement of policy-making capacity (ii) Regional cooperation support unit at MoFA (iii) Trained national officials involved in regional cooperation (iv) Technical working groups & Ministerial Consultative Group |
One of the major tasks of the project has been to help the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to articulate its policy on regional cooperation. The project is providing specific inputs as well as helping the Ministry in its day to day functioning in this regard. The Ministry is in the process of preparing National Foreign and Security Strategy. Regional cooperation portion of this strategy is prepared by the Team Leader and submitted to the Senior Policy Advisor to the Minister (appendix A). It is hoped that this will be part of the national strategy.
A separate section of the foreign Ministry website has been dedicated to regional cooperation. This section explains not only government policy, but also provides documents and recent news concerning regional cooperation from the region. This section is available at www.mfa.gov.af/regional-cooperation.asp. From the feed back received so far, it seems that many people from different government offices have started using this site. The news section is updated at least three to four times every week (details in Appendix E). As per the TOR, one important task of the of the project is to help the MoFA in institutionalizing regional cooperation activities in such a way that it can assume a greater role and responsibilities in planning and coordination of regional cooperation activities with the rest of the Ministries and agencies. To accomplish this task, the TA has helped the Ministry to establish a steering Committee on Regional Cooperation (SCRC). The first meeting of the SCRC took place in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 25 February 2007. The main purpose of this committee is to further institutionalize regional cooperation within the government Ministries, with regional countries, with the donor community and with the multilateral organizations. All important line Ministries, regional and G8 countries and multilateral organisations were invited. Almost all invited members participated in the meeting at a fairly high level. The Meeting was jointly chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs H.E Dr Rangin Dafdar Spanta and Chief Economic Advisor to the President Prof Ishaq Naderi. The meeting was a major gathering of country representatives and Ministries since the Second Regional Economic Cooperation Conference (RECC) which took place in Delhi last year. After the finalisation of the Third RECC details, MoFA will hold second meeting of the SCRC soon ( for agenda, report and documents circulated at SCRC meeting see Appendix B1,B2,B3,B4,B5,B6). Training: One of the main TOR of the project has been to make an assessment of training needs, identify target participants and provide training to Ministry officials dealing with regional cooperation issues. To fulfil this objective, a two week training programme for Afghan officials was organised in Delhi between 11 and 23 June 2007. This training was organised in collaboration with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). In the absence of any International Training Specialist, major work related to training viz. identifying training institute, resource persons, target participants as well as developing course schedule and training modules was done by the existing project team. The aim of the training was to acquaint officials about economic diplomacy, impact of security on regional cooperation, trade negotiations, evolution and institutional frameworks of different regional organizations (SAARC, SCO, ECO, CAREC, EU, ASEAN etc). Moreover, they had to be familiarised about regional cooperation in energy, infrastructure and labour issues. A total of seventeen government officials (ten from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, three from the Ministry of Commerce and industry, two from the Afghan Embassy in Delhi, one each from the Afghanistan National Development Secretariat and the Regional Studies Centre of Afghanistan) participated in the programme. Apart from about thirty presentations on various aspects of regional cooperation, Indian Foreign Secretary Mr Shivshankar Menon inaugurated the programme and former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Dr Abdullah Abdullah gave the valedictory address. Brief report of the training is available at the Afghanistan Ministry of foreign Affairs website at http://www.mfa.gov.af/rctp.asp ( for details see Appendix C1,C2,C3 ) Technical Help to MoFA: Apart from helping the project like updating project website and proving all kind of technical support to project work, Mr Behrooz Mohaqeq is also strengthening MoFA capacity in the area of information technology. He has designed the e-governance architecture for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This project is already being implemented in the Accounting and Human Resource Departments of the Ministry. He has also made human resource database for the Ministry. In addition, he has prepared software for the Foreign Relations Database (FRD) which has been uploaded for the internal use of the Ministry. He is also designing the architecture of VPN (Virtual Private Network) system for the Ministry and Afghan embassies around the world and working as a Project Director and contact person for this system. He is also managing and maintaining the Voice Encryption System. He is making a network for AVIS and APIS (Afghanistan Visa and Passport Issuing System) as well as network security encryption for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On behalf of MoFA, he has also written project proposals like VPN proposal to NATO and e-Governance proposal to the Iranian government, and has helped securing funding from the government of Iran and NATO for strengthening Ministrys IT capacity. Translation: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs faces a serious problem in terms of translation of letters and documents. Since there is no functioning translation unit in the Ministry, the translation work is done on the basis of personal requests to Ministry staff on an ad-hoc manner. Many of the officials documents and conventions are not sent timely to relevant offices for comments/ratification because of lack of translation facilities. The project is also helping the Ministry through provision of professional translation of important documents related to regional cooperation. To begin with TA is in the process of getting these documents translated into Dari on priority basis as most of them need to be sent to relevant government Ministries for ratification. SAARC Charter SAARC Social Charter Memorandum of Understanding on the establishment of the SAARC Secretariat. SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism & Additional Protocol. SAARC Convention on Narcotics Drugs & Psychotropic Substances. SAARC Convention on Regional Arrangements for the Promotion of Child Welfare in South Asia. SAARC Convention on Preventing & Combating Trafficking in Women & Children for Prostitution Agreement on Establishing SAARC Food Security Reserve. Agreement on SAARC Preferential Trading Agreement ( SAPTA). Agreement on South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA). SAARC Agreement on Mutual Administrative assistance in Customs Matters. Agreement for Establishing SAARC Arbitration Council. SAARC limited multilateral Agreement for Avoidance of double taxation and Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. Agreement on the Establishment of South Asian University. Agreement on the establishment of SAARC Food Bank. Special help to SAARC Desk: A new SAARC desk has been set up in the Directorate of Regional Cooperation. Since Afghanistan has recently become its member, officials have little information about the requirement of the organisation. After carefully going through all relevant SAARC communications and documents, a check list has been prepared for this desk. This desk is now busy completing all required tasks (Appendix D ). Other Inputs: Apart form routine TA work, Team Leader has also provided inputs for many official speeches to be delivered by the Foreign Minister, Deputy Foreign Minister as well as by other senior officials of the Ministry. At many occasions, talking points have been submitted for many high level meetings. These meetings include SAARC Secretary General meeting with the Foreign Minister as well as Presidents forthcoming meeting with the SCO Secretary General. In addition, inputs were provided for the ANDS Sector Strategies and for the Draft Regional Cooperation Strategy. Tasks Ahead: In the coming months, the MoFA would be involved in two major activities concerning regional cooperation. In mid-October 2007, Afghanistan would be hosting the 17th Ministerial Meeting of ECO Foreign Ministers. In addition, the Third Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan is also expected to take place in Islamabad in the beginning of 2008. TA would help the Ministry in preparation for both the events. To complete the training component, Indian Council of Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has agreed in principle to organise second round of training on regional cooperation for ten days in January 2008. Dr Rajiv Kumar, Executive Director, ICRIER has also agreed to visit Kabul for a week in December 2007 to deliver a series of lectures on regional cooperation. |
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| Linkage to Country/Regional Strategy | As noted in the CSPU 2004-2006, Afghanistan's security and future prosperity will be more easily achieved and more sustainable if there is regional cooperation in transport, energy and water. As a follow-up to the Kabul Ministerial Conference in December 2005, ADB will continue to support activities that will strengthen Afghanistan's links with its regional neighbors. | |
| Geographical Location | Afghanistan | |
| Responsible ADB Officer |
Grant Curtis |
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| Responsible ADB Department |
Central and West Asia Department |
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| Responsible ADB Division |
Afghanistan Resident Mission |
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| Executing Agencies |
Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
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| Timetable | ||
| Fact-finding | 13 Oct 2005 to 16 Oct 2005 | |
| Approval | 22 Dec 2005 | |
| Financing Plan / TA Utilization |  Top
TA Amount |
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| ADB | Others | Gov | Total | Approved Amount | Revised Amount |
| $400,000.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $400,000.00 | $400,000.00 | $221,953.30 |
| Total Commitment | Uncommited Balance | Total Disbursement | Undisbursed Balance |
| $221,953.30 | $0.00 | $221,953.30 | $0.00 |
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