Economic and Social Council

Failing to adopt a final outcome document at the end of its fifty‑first session, participants of the Commission on Population and Development expressed regret that consensus had eluded them for a second consecutive year.

More than 1,000 indigenous participants from all over the world will be at United Nations Headquarters from 16 to 27 April to participate in the seventeenth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.  This year’s session is focused on indigenous peoples’ collective rights to lands, territories and natural resources.

Accurate, disaggregated and updated data on population was essential for policymaking and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it concluded its general debate.

International migration was a global and multidimensional phenomenon of economic and social importance, the Commission on Population and Development heard today, as delegates shared ways to improve the management of flows, address key drivers and channel the potential of young people.

Gateway cities were critical entry points for immigrants from a wide range of countries, serving as hubs for the collection, circulation and dispersion of goods, capital and people, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it continued its annual session.

Rapid urbanization presented some of today’s greatest modern development challenges, yet if effectively harnessed — especially by the world’s 1 billion migrants — it could unleash tremendous growth opportunities, speakers said today as the Commission on Population and Development opened its fifty‑first session.

With 8 per cent of people around the world living in poverty, and 192 million unemployed, achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would require unleashing the power of the business community to solve entrenched structural ills, delegates told the Economic and Social Council Partnership Forum today.

The Commission on the Status of Women, concluding its sixty‑second session today, approved a set of Agreed Conclusions aimed at accelerating gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls, as well as resolutions on assistance to Palestinian women, the release of women and children hostages and the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and the girl child.

The Commission on the Status of Women, continuing its sixty-second session today, took note of several documents related to its synergies with — and contributions to — the broader work of the Economic and Social Council and its High-Level Political Forum on sustainable development.

Unless gender equality extended to land rights and ownership, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would become an impossible vision, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today during a panel discussion, continuing its sixty-second session.