PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT SPECIAL SESSION APPROVES ADDITIONAL PARTICIPATION, ORGANIZATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
Press Release
SOC/4540*
PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT SPECIAL SESSION APPROVES ADDITIONAL PARTICIPATION, ORGANIZATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
20000404The Preparatory Committee for the June special session of the General Assembly on social development this morning decided that its work should be open to the participation of six additional non-governmental organizations. It also approved organizational arrangements for the special Assembly review in June, entitled World Summit for Social Development and Beyond: achieving social development for all in a globalizing world.
The second session of the Preparatory Committee, which began yesterday, will meet at Headquarters until 14 April. The special session will meet in Geneva from 26 to 30 June. It is intended to provide an opportunity for sharing experiences and identifying additional concrete means of furthering the commitments made at the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995). The consensus adoption by 186 countries of the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development charted a new course towards people-centred development.
The participation of the following non-governmental organizations (document A/AC.253/26) was approved: Arab NGO Network for Development; Centro de Estudios Para el Desarrollo y la Participacion; EZE-Evangelishe Zentralstelle fur Entwicklungshilfe (Protestant Association for Cooperation in Development); Deutsches NRO-Forum Weltsozialgipfel (German NGO Forum for the World Social Summit); NGO Committee on Beijing Plus Five-Bangladesh; and the United Nations Youth Organisation.
The draft decision on organizational matters (document A/AC.253/L.15) makes recommendations to the Assembly in the following areas, among others: date and duration of the session; officers; credentials; level of representation; rules of plenary debate; and participation of speakers other than Member States.
Prior to the approval of that draft decision, the representative of Syria said the reports of the various specialized agencies assessing issues of social development and proposals for further action had not been translated into all of the official United Nations languages. In the discussion that followed, the
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* Press Release SOC/4538 of 3 April should have been numbered SOC/4539.
Preparatory Committee for - 2 - Press Release SOC/4540 Special Session on Social Development 4 April 2000 2nd Meeting (AM)
representative of Denmark attempted to link unpaid dues with the means to translate documents. Support was expressed for the concern raised by the Syrian representative.
Committee Chairman Christian Maquieira (Chile) appealed to delegations to retain the very good climate in the room and refrain from offending other delegations. The pace of documents translation might be slow because there were so many meetings taking place requiring that service. No one sought to deny the legitimate needs of delegations. The only report going to Geneva was the Committees report, which would be translated into all of the official languages.
The Preparatory Committee will meet again at a date and time to be announced.
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