The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, ESCWA looks after enhancing the Western Asian region’s performance on Trade Facilitation issues to foster more economic development through assisting countries identity and implement  priorities of trade facilitation reform to bring about further integration at the regional and global level.  

ESCWA’s effort is trade facilitation complements its work on other core areas including trade policy reform and transport and logistics development with the objective of improving competitiveness and reducing trade barriers and trade cost.

The agenda of trade facilitation for the coming years include various activities including: 

• Increase awareness among member countries of the need for launching trade facilitation reform. 
• Building capacities within member countries to design and implement trade facilitation programmes. 
• Assisting member countries to mainstream trade facilitation in development strategies in the short and long term. 
• Assisting member countries to engage in negotiations and implementation of global trade facilitation talks and implementation programmes.
• Enabling countries to implement far reaching trade facilitation measures beyond those articulated in global trade facilitation agenda to enable their exports to flourish move away from reliance on natural resources and exports of commodities.