IDEAS Centre’s assistance in

Training, awareness-raising and capacity-building
Our Projects

 tailor-made training and capacity-building programmes

IDEAS Centre offers tailor-made training and capacity-building programmes on the World Trade Organization (WTO), specific trade-related issues, WTO accession, WTO negotiations as well as negotiations strategy and tactics. These programmes can be delivered to public civil servants, academia, civil society or the private sector and are adapted to the needs of the client. A selection of such training is available on the left column.

IDEAS Centre has a long and vast experience of providing trade-related training and capacity-building support, which is often a prominent part of its assistance projects. In most of its accession projects, IDEAS Centre has provided/provides several seminars on WTO accession in general as well as on specific technical issues (agriculture, SPS, TBT, etc.).

It proposes workshops to its partners on matters under negotiations and of interest to the country as well as on emerging issues, such as Border Carbon Adjustment. IDEAS Centre is also regularly invited to provide analysis of an issue at stake in, for instance, WTO negotiations during workshops organised for various groupings such as the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States or the Least-Developed Country Group.

The Centre also organises practical and hands-on training of one to six months for civil servants from partner countries. These traineeships take place at IDEAS Centre in collaboration with the WTO mission of the country in question and allow the intern to follow and focus on WTO activities and negotiations of interest to him/her and his/her country with the direct assistance of the Centre. IDEAS Centre has welcomed/welcomes trainees from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Lao PDR, Mali, Montenegro, Serbia and Tajikistan.

IDEAS Centre’s services

In addition to  general trainings providing theoretical information, IDEAS Centre specializes in providing tailor-made focused sessions on specific issues the partner country is required to resolve, commonly using learning-by-doing approach.

The advantages of such approach are the following:

The training has a direct output which the partner country needs i.e. it identifies possible solutions and approaches to a problem the country is required to solve or has decided to address. In addition to the training benefit, this approach also delivers an operational output.

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Our programmes – which are given on learning-by-doing basis – assure that the training is useful and practical: the trainees learn what they need to know to do their job. The fact that the training is helping them to do their job also ensures that they are eager to learn and that they master the subjects which they are taught. It also contributes to ensure that they are used after the training for the jobs they have been trained for rather than being transferred to some other task.

Trainees who come to Geneva continue to work on the subject they were covering in the capital. They are often more productive in Geneva in doing their assignment than in the capital as: (i) they are fully dedicated to the job, while in the capital they are often asked to do other non-related activities; (ii) they have the support and guidance of the Centre’s expert; and (iii) they can obtain information at the WTO secretariat or with other delegations and support institutions that cannot easily be mobilised from the capital. Moreover, the training provides the trainees with easier access to people and resources for their work once they return to the capital. This is extremely important for LDCs which have limited human resources and which cannot afford to have their officials move out for a training and leave their job for an extended period of time without jeopardising the work at home.

Our Projects

Support to Lao PDR in the Process of Joining WTO Information Technology Agreement

THE PROJECT Timeline: March 2019 – December 2019   Donor: Australia (DFAT) Beneficiary: Lao People’s Democratic Republic Background The WTO...

Providing support to the LIDCs in the negotiations on agriculture, fisheries and e-commerce (with a special emphasis on ASEAN LDCs and selected African LIDCs)

THE PROJECT Timeline: 2018 –2019 Donor: Germany (GIZ) Beneficiaries: low Income Developing Countries (LIDC) with a special emphasis on ASEAN LDCs...

Capacity-building in Myanmar I & II

THE PROJECT Timeline: 2013 - 2014 Donor: Germany (GIZ) Beneficiary: Myanmar Background Two projects on trade-related capacity building were...

Workshop in Mongolia

THE PROJECT Timeline: 2014 - 2015 Donors: Germany (GIZ), Trade Policy and Promotion Fund Beneficiary: Mongolia The Deutsche Gesellschaft für...

Seminar for the private sector on negotiations

THE PROJECT In 2010, IDEAS Centre organised a one-day seminar for a group of 40 Swiss private sector representatives. The issues addressed were: how...