Meetings Coverage

While today’s youth were the most educated generation in history, they comprised nearly half of the world’s current jobless population, due in part to a mismatch between their skills and labour market conditions that demanded problem solving, decision making and teamwork, the Economic and Social Council heard today during a panel discussion devoted to remedying that situation.

Despite cuts in development assistance due to the global economic crisis, ingrained prejudices towards women and cultural barriers confronting them, Guyana had rooted the empowerment and protection of women firmly in its national policies, legislation, educational and social programmes, as well as health initiatives, members of that country’s delegation told the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee today.

BANGKOK, 10 July — The settlement “enterprise”, said one of five panellists this afternoon as the United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace rounded out its first day, had the purpose of solidifying Israeli control over the Occupied Territory and ensuring that under any future diplomatic arrangement, Israel would retain possession of vast and strategically important tracts of Palestinian land.

BANGKOK, 10 July — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today that the long-hoped-for two-State solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “increasingly at risk, moving us further away from our shared objective of a comprehensive peace in the region”. In a message to the United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, the Secretary-General warned that the peace process had been for some time at a “dangerous standstill”.

Committing to a “powerful road map on jobs” through the adoption of a far-reaching Declaration, Government representatives in the Economic and Social Council capped the body’s 2012 high-level segment, and, opening its next phase — on coordination — held a dialogue with the heads of its regional commissions.

The world was watching and the pressure mounting to hammer out in the coming days an effective instrument that would address licit and illicit conventional arms flows, delegates were told today as the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty continued its work at Headquarters.

Stressing that the struggle for women’s equality was far from won, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson today called on the international community to unite in politically empowering women and erasing gender-based discrimination and oppression in all aspects of public and private life.

Corruption impaired economies, weakened democracy and fuelled public distrust — particularly where the rule of law was fragile and institutions were weak — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki–moon told the Economic and Social Council today, as he urged Governments to forge strong links with all stakeholders to build “cultures of integrity”.

With women and girls among the major victims of the violence perpetrated with illegally traded conventional arms, it was vital that an arms trade treaty take into account and contain specific gender-based violence criterion, the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty Conference was told today as it entered its second week of negotiations in New York.

The Economic and Social Council today closed its third Development Cooperation Forum as a range of speakers described a “new world” in which non-traditional partners and innovative development arrangements were becoming increasingly prominent.