Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council today forwarded to the General Assembly a resolution concerning the structure of the World Food Programme’s Executive Board, essentially maintaining the current distribution of seats and rotation pattern.

Following are Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro’s remarks at an informal briefing to the Economic and Social Council on progress in implementing General Assembly resolution 64/289 on system-wide coherence, in New York, 17 February:

The Commission for Social Development took up five draft resolutions today as it approached the end of its forty-ninth session, built around the theme of poverty eradication.

As Haiti prepared for its second round of presidential elections on 20 March, United Nations officials told the Economic and Social Council today that political stability in the Caribbean nation could only be achieved by Haitians themselves, urging that utmost care be taken to ensure the appointment of a responsible Government to lead the people through the next stage of recovery and reconstruction.

Social policy could only be transformative and successful in reducing poverty and putting a nation on a path to sustainable, equitable growth if it was integral to policies that addressed broader socioeconomic and political goals, Sarah Cook, Director of the UNRISD, told the Commission on Social Development today as it continued its forty-ninth session.

Acting on a number of organizational issues, the Economic and Social Council today decided that its meeting with the Bretton Woods institutions, World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) would be held at Headquarters on 10 and 11 March. Approving the provisional agenda for its 2011 substantive session, as orally corrected, the Council also adopted working arrangements for that four-week session.

As Member States discussed ways to envelop the pressing needs of an ageing population that could reach 1.6 billion in the developing world by 2050, the Commission on Social Development today heard three experts lay out ways in which social protection measures could shield individuals and their families from the most severe economic shocks emanating from a financial crisis.

Stressing that social security was a human right, a senior ILO official today spotlighted the issue of social protection and its importance in poverty eradication at a Headquarters press conference on a United Nations-backed programme aimed at promoting investment in and access to essential services and social transfers for poor and vulnerable communities.

Warning of the social costs to economic growth, such as social unrest and protests, and exclusion of the most vulnerable segments of society, the United Nations Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty told the Commission for Social Development today that the only way to ensure that growth benefited the poor was to include in it a human rights component.

As Governments around the world mapped out strategies that would truly help reduce the ranks of hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty, the United Nations Commission for Social Development today heard four anti-poverty experts offer ways to keep the ranks of people living without adequate food, clothing and shelter from swelling.