The one-day session brought together members of the HDN and UNDP to discuss the role of the Network through its visibility and the commitment of its members to the cause of human development, the nature and the depth of their advocacy work in promoting these causes, the substantive input and review-type support they need to provide to the National Human Development Reports (NHDR) as well as Human Development programme work led by UNDP in the country.

Members of this Network can also be used to support regional initiatives, such as the Arab Human Development Reports and be part of regional programme "sounding boards" as well.

Similar to other countries that have created an HDN, the creation of such a network in Jordan has been perceived as a natural next step for the NHDRs, moving towards stronger ownership by civil society and academia. “The motive for the creation of the Human Development Network is the realization globally that the sustainable human development advocacy has to go out of UNDP and must establish a national stakeholdership - in other words, the whole sustainable human development concept must now be owned by others” said Dr. Abla Amawi, UNDP Policy Advisor.

The session included a presentation on the background of sustainable human development and its concept. The presentation also identified the differences between the concept of the Human Capital and the concept of the Human Capacity. The brainstorming session aimed at soliciting the participants views on what they envision the mandate of the network to be, what they can add to it, and what they would expect it to assist them in terms of advocating for the sustainable human development concept. In addition, the meeting aimed to engage the participants in a discussion on their input into the newly created sustainable human development website which is under preparation www.jordandevnet.org/shd/home.htm. The aim is to make the website demand driven and more responsive to the needs of the beneficiaries.

The funding for the session is part of a project that has been granted through the HDR Innovation Fund, that is made possible from a generous contribution of the Dutch Government to UNDP globally. The overall aim of the project is to promote innovation and excellence in the production of Human Development Reports; support the production and advocacy of high quality and policy relevant NHDRs, to promote the concept of human development, to support innovation, and to strengthen UNDP’s internal capacity to deliver operationally on its new vision – to move to upstream interventions that influence policy.