Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

ISTANBUL, 11 April — With preparations under way to elaborate a post-2015 global framework and a set of ambitious sustainable development goals, participants at the tenth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests today stressed that woodlands must have a rightful place in those policy-designing processes, while they also tackled the matter of new financing options for managing those vital natural resources.

ISTANBUL, 10 April — Civil society must have a say in how to sustainably manage the world’s forests, and activities involving woodlands must not threaten those whose livelihoods depended on those vital global resources, representatives of major groups said today as the United Nations Forum on Forests continued its tenth session today.

ISTANBUL, 9 April — Forestry and woodland management were critical to tackling a number of key sustainable development challenges and the most effective way to integrate related issues into the post-2015 international development agenda would be to create a cross-cutting goal on natural resources, the United Nations Forum on Forests heard today as it continued the Ministerial Segment of its tenth session.

ISTANBUL, 8 April — As the United Nations Forum on Forests opened its two-week session in Istanbul this morning, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan implored the developed world to end unbridled, irresponsible growth and commit to sustainably manage the world’s forests before it was too late.

Current global crises impacted young people especially hard, but today’s youth had the energy and ideas to change the world, said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as he welcomed youth delegates to the Economic and Social Council’s Youth Forum, convened under the theme “Shaping tomorrow’s innovators: Leveraging science, technology, innovation and culture for today’s youth”.

Ending all violence against women and girls “must be a priority, not an option” for achieving human rights, social cohesion and sustainable development, declared the Commission on the Status of Women this evening, capping its fifty-seventh annual session with the adoption of a set of much-anticipated agreed conclusions that outlined a strong global framework for prevention and response.

The Commission on the Status of Women wrapped up its general debate today amid calls from civil society groups to focus more substantively on protecting the women and girls whose rights were most often under-represented — or excluded — from the very international human rights instruments intended to protect them.

A sharp, deeply embedded distinction between the so-called “private” family sphere of women and the “public” market sphere of men — coupled with imbalanced caregiving responsibilities — threatened to hamper the development of both women and societies around the world, stressed panellists addressing the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women today.

Men had a crucial role to play — as fathers, brothers, husbands and public advocates — in both speaking out against violence against women and girls, and in defying the destructive stereotypes that served to normalize gender inequality, delegates stressed today, as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into week two of its fifty-seventh session.

Despite shrinking budgets and often-conservative political agendas, Governments throughout the world were making significant strides in expanding multisectoral approaches to eliminate violence against women, characterized by a range of integrated services to prevent abuse and support survivors, speakers said today as the Commission on the Status of Women continued its general debate.