Ministers and other high-level officials concluded the 2021 Forum on Financing for Development Follow-up today, reaffirming their commitment to strengthen multilateral cooperation and solidarity to combat COVID-19’s frustration of global implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, tenuous even before the unprecedented crisis exacerbated existing ones.
Poor countries are facing severe setbacks on their development paths, encumbered by ballooning debts, high risks of default and limited ability to inject desperately needed liquidity into their markets, economic experts told the Forum on Financing for Development today, as they offered ideas for ensuring a more equitable global recovery from the pandemic during three interactive panels.
The Economic and Social Council continued its annual Forum on Financing for Development today, holding two interactive panel discussions, during which speakers proposed potential solutions to COVID-19’s devastating impact on infrastructure investment — lagging even before the novel coronavirus struck — and sought ways to avoid a global post-pandemic recovery that leaves some behind.
The Economic and Social Council opened its annual financing for development forum today amid warnings that, with more than 3 million lives lost to COVID-19 and infections still on the rise, Governments must urgently heed the lessons learned thus far if they are to avoid a lengthy global recession.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the opening of the 2021 Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development, in New York today:
With more than 19,000 participants joining virtually over its two-day session, the 2021 Economic and Social Council Youth Forum concluded today as the largest and most diverse gathering of young people in the United Nations history, amid calls to retain useful pandemic-era tools while addressing the structural inequities that have long held youth back from achieving their full potential.
Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message for the Economic and Social Council Youth Forum today:
After a one-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Economic and Social Council Youth Forum reconvened today in a virtual format to mark its tenth anniversary, with speakers emphasizing the critical role that the world’s 1.8 billion young people can — and must — play in “building back better” and fulfilling the promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
With the world still deep in the grip of COVID‑19, many countries find themselves no more than a crisis or two away from sliding into conflict, speakers warned today during a virtual joint meeting of the Economic and Social Council and the Peacebuilding Commission that focused on ways to forge solidarity and develop conflict-sensitive responses to the worst global pandemic in a century.
The Economic and Social Council today filled two regular vacancies in the Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN‑Women) and elected four additional members to the Executive Committee of the Programme of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
