Economic and Social Council: No name

The Government of New Zealand was now in support of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Pita Sharples, Minister of Māori Affairs of New Zealand, told correspondents today at a Headquarters press conference on the opening day of the ninth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Concerned that 9 million children under 5 years old died each year from largely preventable conditions, and that persistent health inequities, both among and within countries, were impeding improved health outcomes, the Commission on Population and Development today concluded its forty-third session by reaffirming the values of primary health care -– including universal access to services -- as the basis for strengthening health systems.

The impacts of development policies on indigenous peoples’ culture and identity will be the focus of a two-week meeting beginning Monday, 19 April, at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Effective participation and consultation of indigenous peoples is central to such policies.

Despite their systematic marginalization over centuries, women formed the very foundation of the world’s economy and development, the Commission on Population and Development was told today as it debated how population and development issues contributed in turn to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

While mortality had declined and life expectancy had risen across the world -- trends underpinned by a shift in the “disease burden” from communicable to non-communicable diseases -- the HIV pandemic had halted progress and, in some regions, reversed it, health experts told the Commission on Population and Development today, as it continued its general debate.

People around the world were dying because their needs went unmet by health systems that were fragmented, broken and struggling, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it continued its general debate on national experiences related to health, morbidity, mortality and development.

While life expectancy had risen in all regions over the past 50 years -- one major achievement of the last century -- health improvements and medical advances were not reaching huge swaths of the developing world, mandating the global community to work harder to ensure that people did not die of preventable disease, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it opened its forty-third session under the theme of “Health, morbidity, mortality and development”.

As mortality declined in most countries during the twentieth century, life expectancy has risen in all world regions, the United Nations reports, ahead of an intergovernmental meeting on population and development next week in New York. From 47 years in 1950-1955, global life expectancy increased sharply to 68 years in 2005-2010.

The President of the Economic and Social Council today welcomed the “open and constructive” discussions held during the 54-member body’s special high-level meeting with the Bretton Woods institutions, and expressed hope that the spirit of engagement over the past two days marked the beginning of closer relations between the United Nations and the major international financial institutions.

Gathered at Headquarters in New York for their annual meeting with the Economic and Social Council, top officials from the major international financial institutions today highlighted the new possibilities provided by the financial and economic crisis to intensify support for developing countries and mobilize action and resources within the United Nations-backed Financing for Development process to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.