Meetings Coverage and Press Releases

In progress at UNHQ

Social issues

SOC/4787

Deputy Secretary-General Calls for Speedy Action to Create Jobs, Ensure Social Protection as Commission for Social Development Opens Fiftieth Session

As the gap between rich and poor widened and one third of the global workforce remained either unemployed or mired in poverty, the international community must ramp up action to create jobs, ensure social protection and foster economic recovery, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told the Commission for Social Development as it opened its fiftieth session today.
SOC/4778

Commission for Social Development Concludes Forty-ninth Session Urging, in One of Five Resolutions, Debt Relief, Market Access to Address Poverty

The Commission for Social Development wrapped up its forty-ninth session today by approving without a vote five draft resolutions calling for wide-ranging steps, from support for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the upcoming review of the action plan on ageing to improving the lot of youth, persons with disabilities and families.
SOC/4776

Social Policy Can Place Nation on Firm Footing towards Sustained Growth if Broader Socioeconomic, Political Goals Also Addressed, Social Development Commission Told

Social policy could only be transformative and successful in reducing poverty and putting a nation on a path to sustainable, equitable growth if it was integral to policies that addressed broader socioeconomic and political goals, Sarah Cook, Director of the UNRISD, told the Commission on Social Development today as it continued its forty-ninth session.
SOC/4774

Commission for Social Development Discusses Social Protection as Delegates Consider How to Meet Needs of Vast Ageing Population

As Member States discussed ways to envelop the pressing needs of an ageing population that could reach 1.6 billion in the developing world by 2050, the Commission on Social Development today heard three experts lay out ways in which social protection measures could shield individuals and their families from the most severe economic shocks emanating from a financial crisis.
SOC/4773

Economic Growth Could Carry Social Costs if Not Buffeted by Social Protection Schemes during Economic Boom and Busts, Social Development Commission Told

Warning of the social costs to economic growth, such as social unrest and protests, and exclusion of the most vulnerable segments of society, the United Nations Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty told the Commission for Social Development today that the only way to ensure that growth benefited the poor was to include in it a human rights component.
SOC/4772

Anti-Poverty Experts in Commission for Social Development Offer Ways to Keep Ranks of People without Adequate Food, Clothing, Shelter from Swelling

As Governments around the world mapped out strategies that would truly help reduce the ranks of hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty, the United Nations Commission for Social Development today heard four anti-poverty experts offer ways to keep the ranks of people living without adequate food, clothing and shelter from swelling.
SOC/4771

Improving Lives of World’s Poor to Remain Elusive Unless Global Community Tackles Youth Unemployment, Social Development Commission Told at Opening of Session

In striving to improve the lot of the world’s poorest people and achieve sustainable development for all, the international community must recognize that its far-reaching goals would remain elusive unless it tackled unemployment among the youngest members of society, the United Nations Commission for Social Development heard today as it opened its forty-ninth session.