Regional Technical Offices (RTOs) were established by UN-Habitat in 2007 in order to empower unions of municipalities (UoMs) in emergency responses, planning, and development, and specifically to support reconstruction and development in Lebanon. RTOs were established under the framework of Article 122 of Legislative Decree no. 118/1977, which states that “the engineering unit in the Union shall be in charge of certain tasks on behalf of member municipalities, including: assisting in the approval of applications for construction permits, preparing any required technical studies and consultations, preparing the specifications of the supplies, works and services, and developing plans.”
The aim of the RTO is to guide the union to move from emergency response to recovery planning by providing technical and engineering assistance in municipal projects, as well as by supporting decision-making processes, enhancing service delivery, and addressing governance issues at the regional level.
The purpose of the Capacity Development (CD) strategy is to handover RTOs to their respective municipality or union, and to ensure that core competencies and skills are in place for the RTOs to fulfil their mandate in an autonomous and self-sustaining fashion. A CD matrix, appended to the publication, offers a recommended menu of CD interventions that are geared toward this goal.
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