[3] Its main mandate was to "initiate and participate in measures for facilitating concerted action for the economic reconstruction and development of Western Asia.

The regular budget line item is voted on by the United Nations General Assembly on a biennial basis and provides the Commission with resources fulfil its mandate as laid out in the Strategic Framework.

[8] The regular programme of technical cooperation line item works to support member states in formulating sustainable socioeconomic development policies.

[8] The development account line item helps fund capacity building projects at national, subregional, regional and interregional levels.

[14] Rima Khalaf, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCWA, had said it was the first to accuse Israel of being a racist state which had established an apartheid system.

"We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the Secretary-General of the United Nations so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it," Khalaf said to AFP.

[18] In 2019, ESCWA reported regarding the situation of women in the judiciary system, in which only three countries had not appointed female judges yet, including Oman, Saudi Arabia and Somalia.

Other countries which already had female judges were: Iraq (1959), Morocco (1961), Algeria (1962),[19] Sudan (1965[20] or 1976), Lebanon and Tunisia (1966), Yemen (1971), Syria (1975), Palestine (1982), Libya (1991), Jordan (1996), Egypt (2003), Bahrain (2006), the United Arab Emirates (2008), Qatar (2010), Mauritania (2013),[21] and Kuwait (2020).