Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

Resuming its 2013 organizational session, the Economic and Social Council met this morning to hold elections to fill vacant seats in its subsidiary bodies and adopt themes for some items of its upcoming substantive session.

The increasingly complex movement of international migrants — who now flowed circuitously between countries, bringing with them skills, ideas and capital — had a profound impact on families and communities around the world, declared speakers today as the Commission on Population and Development continued its forty-sixth session.

The dual face of migration, providing wide-ranging opportunities for development but also dangers, was emphasized today as delegates in the Commission on Population and Development shared their national experiences on a broad array of trends in the demographics of migration.

Market solutions alone were not enough to handle the problems caused by excessive sovereign debt, a Nobel Prize-winning economist told delegates at a special meeting of the Economic and Social Council today.

Harnessing the rapidly evolving opportunities presented by migration must be a key component of the post-2015 development agenda, speakers emphasized today as the Commission on Population and Development opened its forty-sixth annual session.

Amid sluggish global growth and declining aid flows, financing sustainable development would require significant funding from various sources, and the Economic and Social Council could play a crucial role in promoting a “forward-looking” development agenda to foster transformative change beyond 2015, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said today, as the 54-member body convened its annual high-level meeting with international finance and trade institutions.

Calling on Governments to recognize that forests and the socioeconomic benefits they provide were essential to human development, the United Nations forum working to build global consensus on implementation of forest-related agreements concluded its tenth session late this evening, also deciding to consider setting up a voluntary global fund to support sustainable management of all types of forests and trees.

With facilitators appealing for more time to wrap up the work of the tenth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests, Chairperson Mario Ruales Carranza (Ecuador) urged delegations to redouble their efforts and show flexibility so that expected late-night negotiations would yield concrete, consensus-based decisions by tomorrow.

While welcoming a 75 per cent increase in donations to the voluntary trust funds supporting the work of the United Nations Forum on Forests, the Director of that entity’s Secretariat stressed today that contributions needed to be scaled up in the coming year so the Forum could carry out its expanded mandate and take steps to remedy its “precarious” staffing situation.

Midway through its two-week session, the United Nations Forum on Forests this afternoon considered plans, including the introduction of draft resolutions by its two Working Groups, for the second week’s discussion.