Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

The full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples must be regarded as a political, moral and legal imperative without qualification, the Permanent Forum was told today during a half-day discussion on human rights.

The Economic and Social Council today adopted three texts, the first a resolution endorsing the decision of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to hold its thirty-fourth session in El Salvador during the first half of 2012.

Continuing its resumed 2011 session, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) today recommended special consultative status for 38 entities to the Economic and Social Council, postponing consideration of an additional 33 until answers to the Committee’s outstanding questions were supplied.

Despite progress made in ensuring the rights of indigenous communities around the world, indigenous peoples still lacked enough say in what happened on, and to, their territories, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was told today during a day-long discussion focused on the environment and free, prior and informed consent.

Continuing its resumed 2011 session, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations recommended special consultative status for 11 entities to the Economic and Social Council, postponing consideration of an additional 40 until answers to the Committee’s outstanding questions were supplied.

The annual United Nations forum on indigenous issues kicked off today with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling on delegates to make further strides against the marginalization of indigenous communities, which still made up an estimated one third of the world’s rural poor.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today recommended 43 entities for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, and postponed consideration of 18 applications, as it resumed its 2011 session.

The Commission on Sustainable Development ended its nineteenth session early Saturday morning, unable to agree on policy decisions on practical measures to advance chemical and waste management, transform transport and mining practices, and establish a long-awaited 10-Year Framework of Programmes for sustainable consumption and production patterns, which was first called for at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development.

Just one day shy of its anticipated deadline, the Commission on Sustainable Development today heard from experts in four intensive round table meetings, and held subsequent discussions aimed at advancing the adoption tomorrow of a strong outcome document for the Commission’s 2011 policy session.

Twenty years after participants to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro first recognized that unsustainable consumption and production patterns formed the biggest threat to the Earth’s capacity to satisfy human needs, that challenge continued to loom large and finding a framework to control it must be seen as a strategic priority, the Commission on Sustainable Development was told today, as it opened its three-day high-level segment.