Commission for Social Development

Forty-ninth Session

10^th Meeting (AM)

Social Policy Can Place Nation on Firm Footing towards Sustained Growth if Broader

Socioeconomic, Political Goals Also Addressed, Social Development Commission Told

Social policy could only be transformative and successful in reducing poverty and putting a nation on a path to sustainable, equitable growth if it was integral to policies that addressed broader socioeconomic and political goals, Sarah Cook, Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), told the Commission on Social Development today as it continued its forty-ninth session.

“Where poverty and deprivation are widespread, narrowly targeted social protection interventions rarely make significant inroads into poverty.  Typically, a fall in poverty has less to do with programmes aimed at poverty per se than those aimed at wider social objectives, including employment creation, equality and solidarity,” Ms. Cook said.  That was particularly relevant during times of crisis, when social policies played a crucial role in alleviating both the impact of the crisis and on a society’s ability to build resilience for the future.

That message was reinforced in the 2010 flagship publication of UNRISD, “Combating Poverty and Inequality:  Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics”, she said.

Introducing the report of the UNRISD Board (document E/CN.5/2011/10), which detailed the Institute’s work for 2009 and 2010, she said it highlighted three crucial elements in successful strategies to reduce poverty and inequality, including patterns of growth of structural change that created jobs and improved earnings for most people, comprehensive social policies grounded in universal rights, and civic activism and political arrangements that ensured that States were responsible to meet the needs of all citizens.

The UNRISD had contributed significantly to national polices on poverty-reduction and social protection, and informed the work of the Commission and other United Nations bodies in the regard, she said.  In the past two years, it had responded to more than 100 requests for expert advice from other United Nations agencies, multilateral organizations, Governments, non-governmental organizations, academia and the media.

She said the Institute’s goal in the coming years would be to generate research that showed how issues of social justice and equity could be made central to development processes, rather than subordinate and residual to economic policies and growth.

Also during the meeting, Donald Lee, Chief of the Social Perspective on Development Branch of the Division for Social Policies and Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, introduced the note of the Secretariat on the Division’s draft programme of work for the biennium 2012-2013 (document E/CN.5/2011/CRP1).

The Commission also nominated two new members to the Board of UNRISD, including Ping Huang and Patricia Schulz, and renominated four current Board members, including Peter Brandt Evans, Rosalind Eyben, Annika Sunden and Zenebeworke Tadesse, whose terms expire on 30 June 2011, to serve for a further two years.  The nominees are subject to confirmation by the Economic and Social Council.

The Commission will reconvene at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 17 February, to continue its session.

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For information media • not an official record