While “enormous” gains had been made since the World Summit for Social Development had resulted in the Copenhagen Declaration in 1995, progress remained uneven — both within and among countries — with millions of people still excluded from access to the very rights, services and income-generating activities that underpinned a sustainable future for all, delegates said today as the Commission for Social Development opened the substantive segment of its fifty-fourth session.
Concluding its fifty-third session today, the Commission for Social Development approved by consensus four draft resolutions for adoption by the Economic and Social Council that addressed issues of African development, ageing, youth and the rights of persons with disabilities.
Twenty years after the landmark “Copenhagen Summit”, speakers in the Commission for Social Development today called for transformative public policies that supported a rights-based vision of a world which uplifted living standards for society’s most neglected while recognizing the vast differences among countries’ abilities to bring about that worthy goal.
Social protections, inclusive employment and equal access to education were essential for ensuring that people with disabilities remained at the heart of development efforts in the post-2015 era, the Special Rapporteur on Persons with Disabilities told the Commission on Social Development today, outlining priorities for her three-year tenure since the establishment of her mandate by the Human Rights Council last December.
Amid widening inequalities both within and among countries, delegates in the Commission for Social Development today tackled the perceived trade-off between economic growth and social progress, debating ways to design policies that could improve overall well-being without sacrificing the productivity that allowed their communities to flourish.
“People-centred” development, brought to prominence at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development, remained especially critical today, as Governments, civil society and the United Nations itself worked to finalize the next generation of international targets meant to improve peoples’ lives, the Commission for Social Development heard, as it moved into day three of its fifty-third session.
Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks on the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the World Summit for Social Development, in New York today:
Building on the dynamic momentum leading up to the adoption of new post-2015 goals, delegates debated ways to fine-tune a transformative people-centred approach to sustainable development that would leave no one behind, as the Commission on Social Development opened the second meeting of its fifty-third session today.
Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the World Family Summit +10, as delivered by Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), held in Zhuhai, China from 2 to 4 December:
