PRESS BRIEFING BY CHAIRMAN OF SECOND COMMITTEE

PRESS BRIEFING BY CHAIRMAN OF SECOND COMMITTEE

Development must be brought back to the centre of the United Nations agenda, so as to combat the “soft terror” issues of hunger, disease and environmental degradation while winning back the Organization’s relevance for the world’s societies, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury (Bangladesh), Chairman of the General Assembly’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial), said at a Headquarters press briefing this morning.

In the second of a series of briefings initiated by Assembly President Julian Hunte (Saint Lucia) to bridge the gap between the routine of committee work and issues before the media, Mr. Chowdhury said he had introduced initiatives in the Second Committee to make the subject of development as pertinent to the media on a daily level as such major conferences as last month’s failed Cancun ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO).  A recent panel discussion had focused on corporate responsibility, and, tomorrow, Nobel Laureate and Columbia economics professor Joseph Stiglitz would speak about economic growth and development cooperation.  Later in the current Assembly session, others would speak on matters of interest to both the Committee and those beyond it, including the media.

Stressing that the “soft terror” issues must be addressed, since they were a threat to international peace, he said that today’s main questions did not centre so much on money as on the ability to absorb change and bring about transformation.  The role of the United Nations was to implement the results of the conferences held in the 1990s so as to infuse hope into societies, rather than despair.

Describing trade as a tool of development, he said the United Nations must make it become that.  In the Second Committee, there was an emphasis on expunging ideology, and delegates were asked to generate creative ideas and approaches on how to bring about the necessary transformation in the world’s societies.  The United Nations had fallen down in that area, but it should be a collator and disseminator of best practices.

The United Nations must become more relevant to the media, since it was the media who took the Organization’s message out to the people and influenced their thinking, he said.  The media were vital for improving the relationship between the United Nations and the people, and it was also the Organization’s responsibility to improve that relationship.  Thus, the Second Committee’s approach of making its work relevant to the larger world was an extension of its work on economic development.

Asked about the failure of the Cancun meeting, he said that defining it as “failure” was not quite accurate.  The objective of such events was for societies to hold dialogue and learn from each other.  Also, one purpose of ministerial meetings was to instruct ambassadors and give them direction.  The ambassadors awaiting instruction in Geneva after Cancun were getting the desired direction, one informed partly by the message sent to development partners that decisions could not be “shoved down others’ throats”.

Responding to a question about the major issues before the Second Committee, he said the organization of work was a priority mandate likely to stir debate.  There were many positions on how to proceed with economic development, including the United States position, that of the European Union and that of the Group of 77 developing countries and China.  Reiterating the importance of approaching the issues in non-ideological terms, he said an agreement should be reached by the end of November on organizing the Committee’s work in a way that addressed post-Monterrey concerns.

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