Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

Fifteen years after world leaders adopted the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on gender equality and women’s empowerment, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro urged Government ministers to replicate successful policies and programmes to end violence against women and improve women’s education, maternal health and role in decision-making, as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its fifty-fourth session today.

The Commission for Social Development concluded its forty-eighth session today by approving a draft resolution on the social dimensions of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

As it continued its forty-eighth session, the Commission on Social Development this afternoon approved its first ever resolution on promoting social integration in order to eradicate poverty, promote full and productive employment and achieve stable, safe, peaceful harmonious and just societies for all ‑‑ goals set forth in the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and its Programme of Action.

As the Economic and Social Council continued to fine tune the agenda of its 2010 session, the 54-member body’s President today announced the chairpersons for the thematic clusters examined annually by the Council, and urged delegations to conclude negotiations and present their proposals as soon as possible so that all outstanding matters could be addressed ahead of the substantive session -- set to be held from 28 June to 23 July in New York.

The Commission for Social Development met today to consider its agenda item on programme questions and other matters.

Holding its second organizational meeting this year, the Economic and Social Council today adopted five decisions, outlining its agenda and work programme for its 2010 substantive session, set to be held from 28 June to 23 July in New York.

The policy responses to the global financial crisis had been inadequate and characterized by double standards, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told the Commission on Social Development as it began its discussion of policy responses on employment and the social consequences of the financial and economic crises, including its gender dimension.

The economic slowdown had weakened the world’s social safety net, but delegates of countries from Nicaragua to Kenya, speaking during the Commission for Social Development’s forty-eighth session today, reported some progress in improving the socio-economic situation of their most vulnerable and marginalized citizens thanks to a range of social integration programmes.

During a high-level panel on social integration that opened the session’s second day, delegations in the Commission on Social Development today wrestled with finding reasons why many social integration policies were inadequate, with many agreeing they had been developed on a piecemeal basis, and fashioned into solutions seldom accompanied by implementation and evaluation frameworks.

Since world leaders met in Copenhagen in 1995 to adopt a declaration and action programme for social change, encouraging progress had been made in promoting the inclusion of socially marginalized groups, but “daunting” challenges remained in reaching broader social development goals, Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said today, as the Commission for Social Development opened its forty-eighth session.