Meetings Coverage

The challenges facing Darfur must be met within a national context at this critical time for Sudan, Dmitry Titov, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told the Security Council today, emphasizing that core issues such as power- and wealth-sharing required a comprehensive and farsighted approach that took into account the interests of all stakeholders, particularly those too long marginalized by the conflict.

The Commission for Social Development met today to consider its agenda item on programme questions and other matters.

Holding its second organizational meeting this year, the Economic and Social Council today adopted five decisions, outlining its agenda and work programme for its 2010 substantive session, set to be held from 28 June to 23 July in New York.

Despite an encouraging commitment to peacebuilding priorities on the part of the Guinea-Bissau authorities, there had been only slow progress in security-sector reform, economic development and combating drug trafficking, the Chairperson of the Peacebuilding Commission’s relevant country-specific configuration said today.

The policy responses to the global financial crisis had been inadequate and characterized by double standards, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told the Commission on Social Development as it began its discussion of policy responses on employment and the social consequences of the financial and economic crises, including its gender dimension.

Just days ahead of the opening of the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the General Assembly took note today of the solemn appeal made by its President to all United Nations Member States to observe the ancient tradition of the “Olympic Truce”, during which warring parties would stop fighting and lay down their arms in celebration of the Games.

Strengthening the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the European security architecture and improving its partnership with the United Nations in tackling threats to global peace and security would be key priorities for the Government of Kazakhstan in 2010, as the country took over the regional body’s leadership, Foreign Minister and incoming Chairman-in-Office Kanat Saudabayev told the Security Council today.

The economic slowdown had weakened the world’s social safety net, but delegates of countries from Nicaragua to Kenya, speaking during the Commission for Social Development’s forty-eighth session today, reported some progress in improving the socio-economic situation of their most vulnerable and marginalized citizens thanks to a range of social integration programmes.

During a high-level panel on social integration that opened the session’s second day, delegations in the Commission on Social Development today wrestled with finding reasons why many social integration policies were inadequate, with many agreeing they had been developed on a piecemeal basis, and fashioned into solutions seldom accompanied by implementation and evaluation frameworks.

Since world leaders met in Copenhagen in 1995 to adopt a declaration and action programme for social change, encouraging progress had been made in promoting the inclusion of socially marginalized groups, but “daunting” challenges remained in reaching broader social development goals, Sha Zukang, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said today, as the Commission for Social Development opened its forty-eighth session.