Meetings Coverage

Setting out the priorities for the 2011 term in the Chair of the OSCE, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister stressed today the values that the regional body held in common with the United Nations and called for greater cooperation to expand peace, advance human rights, generate sustainable development and build a safer world.

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.

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.

The Security Council stressed today the need to take into account the economic and social dimensions of conflict, in addition to the political factors of maintaining international peace and security, as more than 60 speakers, including Government ministers, the Secretary-General and a World Bank official, took part in a day-long debate.

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.

In striving to improve the lot of the world’s poorest people and achieve sustainable development for all, the international community must recognize that its far-reaching goals would remain elusive unless it tackled unemployment among the youngest members of society, the United Nations Commission for Social Development heard today as it opened its forty-ninth session.

Welcoming the 7 February official announcement of the Southern Sudan referendum’s final results, which showed 98.83 per cent of voters choosing independence, the Security Council called today on the international community to lend its full support to all Sudanese people as they built a peaceful and prosperous future.

As the General Assembly convened its first-ever informal thematic debate on disaster risk reduction today, senior United Nations officials called urgently for investment in advanced planning and sound policies to help countries avert natural hazards that would cost more in human and financial terms than steps to prevent them or reduce their impact.

Wrapping up its 2011 regular session, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today recommended special consultative status for 24 entities to the Economic and Social Council, boosting the session to a record 112 organizations that had been recommended for status, said the Committee’s Chairman.