Economic and Social Council

Resuming its 2013 substantive session, the Economic and Social Council met this morning to fill vacant seats in its subsidiary bodies and to take action on draft proposals.

The Commission on Sustainable Development had helped to shape the global agenda for the twenty-first century, its Chairperson said today as the body held its final session, 20 years after its inception.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations met briefly this morning to adopt, as orally revised, the report of its 2013 resumed session, held from 20 to 29 May, during which it recommended to the Economic and Social Council 161 such organizations for consultative status and deferred 219 for further consideration at its regular session in 2014.

In a call to action, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues approved a draft decision today recommending that the Economic and Social Council rename it as the “Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, at the close of a two-week session marked by a dynamic effort to preserve those peoples’ identity, ensure their rights and secure a fully fledged place on the global stage.

The international community’s attention to indigenous peoples appears to be waning, and, after 12 years of existence, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues might be experiencing “fatigue”, the expert body heard today as it wrapped up its substantive work on the penultimate day of its twelfth session.

A United Nations expert panel on tax matters launched today at Headquarters a manual intended to help developing countries expand fiscal stability and tax revenues by more accurately gauging the way in which multinational corporations set the prices for goods traded between corporate subsidiaries.

Including indigenous peoples in shaping the post-2015 development agenda and in closing persistent gaps in the current scheme was crucial, so that when the time came, the global community could “hit the ground running”, the Permanent Forum heard today during a panel discussion in which top United Nations policy advisers sketched plans for the much-anticipated follow-on proposal.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, while taking note of seven quadrennial reports and approving its provisional agenda for 2014, recommended suspensions, withdrawals and name changes of accredited organizations.

Indigenous peoples should be highlighted as “the best guardians of the Mother Earth” in the outcomes of all preparatory processes leading up to next year’s high-level global conference on the topic, where the expectation was a “strong indigenous voice” on matters that affected them, the United Nations Permanent Forum heard today as it began its second week of work.

For the third time in its history, and the second time in its current session, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations recommended special consultative status to a gay civil society group, as it continued to put under scrutiny the dozens of applications before it — approving special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council for four organizations and deferring action on 48 applications.