Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

The Economic and Social Council today heard from urban development and sustainability experts including mayors and other public officials focused on building resilient cities, as it continued its 2018 integration segment.

Technological progress was a valuable tool for building resilience, but it must benefit everyone, including the poor, as nations ramp up their ability to weather increasingly complex shocks while at the same time putting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into practice, the Economic and Social Council heard today as it opened its three-day 2018 integration segment.

Following a fortnight of meetings, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues concluded its seventeenth session this afternoon, adopting a raft of recommendations which reflected this year’s central theme — indigenous peoples’ collective rights to lands, territories and resources — and urged the Secretary‑General to convene regional consultations in the coming months on ways to enhance their participation in the work of the United Nations.

The Economic and Social Council conducted a series of interactive discussions on a range of issues spanning from development cooperation to debt to foreign investment as it wrapped up its four-day forum on financing for development.

Continuing volatility and a lack of trust were just some of the issues hindering private sector investment in developing countries, speakers said today, as the Economic and Social Council held three round-table discussions as part of its annual forum on financing for development.

Ministers and high‑level representatives today adopted a series of conclusions and recommendations on financing for development and the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as the Economic and Social Council’s forum on financing for development entered its second day.

The upturn in the world economy was encouraging and provided a platform for further progress, but lingering economic vulnerabilities, the escalation of geopolitical tensions and natural disasters could derail development gains, ministers and high-level officials emphasized today, as the Economic and Social Council’s Forum on Financing for Development got under way.

Indigenous peoples must be more involved in the work of the United Nations, and allowed to determine who participated on their behalf, speakers in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said today, with some questioning Governments’ commitment to further consider that issue.

Indigenous women faced myriad forms of violence, and in the United States, murder rates that were 10 times the national average, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today, as participants considered the range of problems impairing or outright blocking the exercise of basic rights.

The Economic and Social Council today adopted three decisions and took up several reports, including two addressing food security and nutrition, as the organ concluded the first part of its coordination and management meetings of the 2018 session.