The International Olympic Committee’s new Permanent Observer status at the United Nations would enable it to promote sport as a right for all people, rather than a privilege, and help it empower women, Anita L. DeFrantz, Chair of the world sports body, said at a Headquarters press conference today.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
The international community was moving towards a “new geographical level of policy planning and political decision-making in the world”, which could lend itself to the creation of a council for sustainable development at the United Nations, Finland’s Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, Paavo Väyrynen, suggested today at a Headquarters press conference on the margins of the high-level segment of the Economic and Social Council’s session.
While the Group of 20 (G-20) had been important in addressing the global financial crisis, after more than a decade in existence, it had not significantly addressed the challenges of poverty eradication, labour equality, and the environment, which remained necessary for sustainable development, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said at Headquarters today.
Replacing the abundance of sexy, racy images of women and girls in children’s television shows and films with diverse, true-to-life female characters would contribute towards efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on women’s empowerment and gender equality, Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, said Monday during a Headquarters press conference.
On many fronts — its peace and security, development and humanitarian agendas included — the United Nations was partnering with the private sector in new and diverse ways to more efficiently tackle some of the world’s most entrenched problems, said Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning.
Emphasizing that gender equality and women’s empowerment lay at the heart of achieving all the other Millennium Development Goals, Hamidon Ali (Malaysia), President of the Economic and Social Council, said today that the Council’s upcoming session would aim to capitalize on those links to improve the socio-economic lot of women everywhere.
As the world continued to reel from the financial crisis, and climate change, poverty and resource constraints tested capabilities, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged more than 1,200 top business executives gathered in New York City for the 2010 Global Compact Leaders Summit to usher in a new era of sustainability in which corporations played a central role.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an intensified focus on priorities, political will and partnership to achieve the Millennium Development Goals this morning, as he launched a report that showed a mix of progress and obstacles in reaching the anti-poverty targets. “This report shows that economic uncertainty cannot be an excuse to slow down our development efforts. It is a reason to speed them up,” he said, introducing the major findings of the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010.
The two-day United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit 2010 would combine a distinguished group of public servants familiar with how to “speak business” and a distinguished group of business leaders accustomed to speaking up for the public good, Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning, said at Headquarters today.
Existing modern energy services failed to meet the needs of half the world’s population — some 3 billion people — hampering the ability of poor countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, but an innovative micro-hydropower project that supplied electricity to remote, rural communities in Nepal held lessons that could be applied and scaled up elsewhere, Olav Kjørven, Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said at Headquarters today.