Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council today closed its second Development Cooperation Forum amid calls for a “desperately needed” road map to reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and an understanding of areas where attaining the targets would have a multiplier effect, whether by investing in women and girls or supporting capacity for domestic resource allocation.

Amid what many speakers called a complex economic and financial climate, the Economic and Social Council today launched its second Development Cooperation Forum, built around multi-stakeholder dialogues covering various types of global development cooperation, aid allocation and effectiveness, and policy coherence.

While the Group of 20 (G-20) had been important in addressing the global financial crisis, after more than a decade in existence, it had not significantly addressed the challenges of poverty eradication, labour equality, and the environment, which remained necessary for sustainable development, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said at Headquarters today.

Tackling complex development issues required pragmatic decision-making, the President of the Economic and Social Council said today, challenging diplomats to come up with straightforward solutions to the need for higher standards of living and greater socio-economic progress, especially for women, as the 54-member body opened the high-Level segment of its 2010 substantive session.

Emphasizing that gender equality and women’s empowerment lay at the heart of achieving all the other Millennium Development Goals, Hamidon Ali (Malaysia), President of the Economic and Social Council, said today that the Council’s upcoming session would aim to capitalize on those links to improve the socio-economic lot of women everywhere.

Meeting in a special event on the beleaguered nation of Haiti today, the Economic and Social Council heard updates on the start-up last week of the Interim Haitian Reconstruction Commission and the steering committee for its companion fund, and considered ways to optimize the coordination and coherence of its own actions for the country, which first found its way onto the Council’s agenda in 1999.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) concluded its 2010 resumed session today by adopting its draft report, with the understanding that it would be finalized with the Secretariat’s support and in consultation with Committee members, as appropriate.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today suspended its 2010 resumed session when it ran out of time to complete consideration of its report; it agreed to ask the Committee on Conferences for additional meeting time in order to wrap up its business for the year.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) today recommended sevenentities for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, postponed its consideration of 32 applications, and closed three others. It also suspended 77 organizations which failed to complete reporting requirements, and one more on the basis of a written complaint by the delegation of Turkey.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today took note of the quadrennial reports of 220 non-governmental organizations in consultative status and deferred consideration of the reports of 21 more, owing to insufficient information.