Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today continued its careful scrutiny of applicants seeking consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, adding 37 new organizations to the more than 3,500 NGOs admitted since the Committee’s launch in 1946, while postponing consideration of 43 new applications pending responses to questions posed by Committee members.

Opening its regular session for 2012, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, which is responsible for vetting applications seeking consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, today recommended special consultative status for 47 organizations, all but three of which were based in countries in the global South.

As the United Nations embarked on an important year of milestone events, Secretary-General Ban-Ki-moon said today that the work of the Economic and Social Council — the central forum for discussing and coordinating action on such issues as sustainable development, disaster risk reduction, and economic growth — would be vital in realizing his vision of global “solidarity for an era of austerity and uncertainty”.

Resuming its 2011 substantive session, the Economic and Social Council today adopted two draft texts, including one on small island developing States, and filled vacancies on seven subsidiary bodies, including the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women).

Resuming its 2011 substantive session, the Economic and Social Council elected a Vice-President to its Bureau today and filled vacancies in a number of its subsidiary bodies, having deferred several elections from previous sessions.

Having finished its work on 24 May, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today concluded its 2011 resumed session, adopting by consensus its report, which contained seven draft decisions on matters that called for action by the Economic and Social Council.

Concluding its tenth anniversary session today with the adoption of a draft report on that session, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues looked to its future work, welcoming the opportunity and full responsibility in playing a central role in preparations for the 2014 World Conference on Indigenous Peoples and underlining the need for the equal, direct and meaningful participation of indigenous communities during all stages of that landmark meeting.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, meeting today to discuss the provisional agenda for its next session, solidified its plans to hold discussions in 2012 on food security, human rights and the session’s proposed special theme, the “Doctrine of Discovery” — which some members stressed would be a “forward thinking” dialogue.

In a resumed organizational session today, the Economic and Social Council filled vacancies in three of its subsidiary bodies, electing members by secret ballot and by acclamation. Voting by secret ballot, the Council elected Iran to a four-year term on the Commission on Population and Development, beginning today and expiring at the close of that body’s forty-eighth session in 2015.

While well versed in overseeing the implementation of peace accords, the United Nations system had much less experience in supporting indigenous peoples and communities in conflict resolution, and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues should consider what kind of role it could play in addressing those gaps, that body was told today as it took up the report of its Special Rapporteur on the status of implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997.