UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)

ESCAP member States, in a meeting held in Bangkok early October 1996, scrutinized the Asia-Pacific implementation of Agenda 21, the environmental action plan adopted by UN member countries in Rio in 1992. The results will be submitted to the special session of the General Assembly in June next year.

A Ministerial Declaration, adopted by the Asia-Pacific countries last November, defined the priorities for the region but revealed the lack of regional funds to carry out Agenda 21's recommendations. Among the chief concerns in the Asia-Pacific region are: integration of water resources development; the social and economic development process of each country; the private sector's participation in addressing environmental concerns; and, disaster mitigation. With more than 50 per cent of the world's major disasters occurring in the Asian and Pacific region, countries have pledged to provide more information and to educate the public on hazards.

In a recent questionnaire,ESCAP member countries gave the ESCAP Secretariat top marks for its handling of the region's environmental concerns calling for more focus on regional cooperation on the issue. Countries called for continued monitoring of Agenda 21 to push for concrete measures to solve regional environment measures.

International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)

ECE, in consultation with UNFPA, has formulated a population programme for 1996-1999, the aim of which will be to support the follow-up to the ICPD and the European Population Conference (EPC), particularly in countries with economies in transition. The programme will provide governments and NGOs with data, analysis and conclusions needed to monitor the implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action and the EPC recommendations.

ECLAC Sessional ad hoc Committee on Population and Development met for the first time during the Commissions's April session to review the progress in the implementation of the Regional Plan of Action on Population and Development, adopted in pursuance of ICPD. The discussions were based on the Report on the follow-up prepared by ECLAC/CELADE.

This report also included an update of the demographic situation in Latin America and the Caribbean, showing, among others, that between 1960 and 1990 the population of the region rose by 230 million; but 94% of this increase occurred in urban areas. Indeed, urbanization of Latin America and the Caribbean is such that it is now reaching a level similar to that of the developed countries. Latin America has only 8% of the world's population as a whole, but it has several of the world's mega-cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

Another key development mentioned in the ECLAC Report is that although the population in the region trebled between 1950 and 1995 to 479 million, fertility rates have fallen sharply, reducing the average annual population growth rate. Total fertility rates have halved between 1950 and 1995 from women having an average of about six children during their child-bearing years, to having three children or less.

The Report also notes that even though in the last few decades in Latin America and the Caribbean there has been a slight decrease in gender-based income inequalities, women's wages still are between 20% and 40% lower than those earned by men.

ECA convened an Expert/NGO Workshop on the Dakar NGO Declaration (DND) and ICPD Programme of Action and participated in the Joint ECA/OAU/ADB missions of the African Population Commission to assess country experiences of some member States in implementing the DND and the ICPD programme. ECA also convened a Senior Policy Seminar on the social impact of HIV/AIDS on the African population.

ESCWA organized the First Meeting of Heads of National Population Councils in the Arab World on 9 October 1996 in Amman. This was preceded by a regional Expert Group Meeting on "Population Dynamics and Sustainable Development in the Arab World: Interrelationships and Impacts," on 6-8 October. The two meetings were part of a project entitled "Population Policies for Arab countries in the ESCWA Region and North Africa," which is being implemented by ESCWA with support from the UNFPA.

The meeting adopted recommendations that would improve the ability of Arab national population councils to prepare and develop comprehensive development policies in their countries, in addition to providing practical alternatives to the methods of implementation, follow-up and assessment of current population policies.

ESCWA also organized a training workshop on population policies and sustainable development in Amman 8 - 12 September 1996. Attending the workshop were participants from: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunis and Yemen.

World Social Summit on Development (WSSD)

ECE Senior Economic Advisers considered the outcome of the Social Summit and decided to convene a workshop on "Managing the Social Consequences of Structural Change in Transition Economies" which was held in Paris, 1-2 July 1996. It examined which other steps might contribute to better management of the social consequences of structural change, and the roles to be played by the State, social partners, local communities and social welfare agencies, respectively, and assessed the conditions and forms of cooperation.

ECLAC, in compliance with the Plan of Action of the WSSD, is organizing a follow-up regional meeting which will take place in Sao Paulo, Brazil in early April 1997. Following the Summit's mandate for this task,ECLAC will be collaborating with different regional intergovernmental organizations - the Panamerican Health Organization (PAHO), the Sistema Permanente Latinoamericano (SELA), the Organization of American States (OAS), the regional offices of the UNDP and UNICEF, and the Interamerican Development Bank (IBD).

The focus of the meeting will be on identifying the main challenges the region will be facing for the rest of the nineties regarding the three themes of the WSSD: overcoming poverty, generation of productive employment and fostering social integration. ECLAC will be stressing that the persistence of those challenges reinforces the need to adopt an integrated approach to development, and will be offering member States policy proposal in this regard.

Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW)

ECE convened an inter-agency meeting in January 1996 which gathered the UN organizations as well as regional and subregional institutions active in women's issues in the ECE region. This meeting constituted the first stage in monitoring the implementation of both the ECE Regional Platform for Action and the Global Platform for Action. Prior to the meeting, the invited agencies replied to a questionnaire sent by the ECE secretariat requesting them to indicate the areas in which they are involved through activities planned or already under way.

The recommendations of the inter-agency meeting were presented to the Third Meeting of the European Regional Representatives of ACC members which took place in February 1996 in Geneva. The participating agencies endorsed and supported the approach adopted by the inter-agency consultative meeting for ensuring the regional follow-up to both the regional and global Platforms for Action, namely mainstreaming, monitoring and assistance for the advancement of women in the region.

ESCAP organized a two-day seminar with local women's organizations at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok, to commemorate "One Year after Beijing." Earlier, ESCAP had convened the first meeting of the Regional Interagency Subcommittee on the Advancement of Women in October 1995. Several activities addressing the critical areas of concern identified in both the Global Platform for Action and the Regional Plan of Action are under way. Expert Group meetings have been held to discuss how women can participate more in decision making in the Asia-Pacific governments. Discussions also focused on women's rights as human rights and on strengthening national machineries for the advancement of women.

The following are some of ESCAP's women's projects in the pipeline:

- A regional survey on the status of women in poverty, focusing on female-headed and female-maintained households in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and the Philippines is in progress.

- National workshops on promoting the participation of women in the economic development of Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic and Vietnam are being held.

- A video on the critical areas of concern of the Regional Plan of Action in coordination with the Global Platform for Action has been produced. Information kits on the Platform of Action to reach women at the grassroots level are being produced in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

ECLAC's activities in relation to the Follow-up to the FWCW are aimed both at the implementation of the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001 and the Platform for Action. This is being pursued mainly through reinforcing the activities of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean. This includes strengthening their liaison function with government agencies responsible for women's issues in the region; informing the countries of the region about the activities; and encouraging government agencies to accord more importance to women's issues. Since the FWCW, the Presiding Officers have met once in Santiago on 16-17 May 1996, and will be meeting again in Port-of-Spain on 18-19 November 1996. At the May meeting ECLAC reported on the activities carried out, including the publications of documentation regarding indicators on the status of women and data bases of national organizations dealing with programmes and policies on women in the region.

An important part of the up-coming meeting in Port-of-Spain will be the preparation for the seventh session of the Regional Conference that will be held in Santiago in November 1997. Delegations will be analyzing the changes in the region since the Beijing Conference, the present needs of member States and the relationship with NGOs.

ECA organized a meeting of the Bureau of the fifth Regional Conference on Women, which prepared the framework for accelerating the implementation of the Global and Regional Platforms for Action in Africa. The framework has been disseminated to all national machineries, relevant ministries, NGOs, training and research institutions for their use in the implementation process.

ECA expanded its support for the implementation of the Global and Regional Platforms for Action by strengthening its partnership with other organizations including NGOs, such as, the African Women Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) and Regional Field Facilitation Initiative of East Africa (RFFI-EA). ECA co-organized with the Ghana Association of Women Entrepreneurs (GAWE) the first Global Trade Fair and Investment forum, which was held in Accra from 26 June to 3 July 1996 and which offered women entrepreneurs opportunities for networking, skill development, information sharing, market expansion and forging of partnerships for expanded trade and investment. At the initiative of the Government of Uganda, ECA collaborated with the OAU in the organization of an African Regional Conference in which the most important outcome was the adoption of an action oriented declaration and framework entitled "The Kampala Declaration and Action Framework on the Empowerment of Women through Functional Literacy and the Education of the Girl Child.". ECA also collaborated with OECD/DAC in organizing a seminar on: "Implications of the Beijing Conference for Bilateral Development Cooperation in the Southern Africa Region", with the aim of increasing support and networking for enhanced collaboration in the implementation of Global and Regional Actions for the development of African women.

ESCWA and the League of Arab States collaborated in organizing a meeting of the Arab Ministers of Social Affairs, preceded by an expert group meeting, which was hosted by the Government of Jordan in Amman, on 28-29 September 1996. The objective of the meeting was to assess the follow-up action after the Fourth World Conference on Women. ESCWA provided conference services and technical support and UNIFEM, UNDP, UNFPA and ILO provided financial and/or technical support. The Ministers adopted three areas of concern as being of utmost priority in the region: poverty (economic concern), participation in decision-making (political concern) and the family (social concern). It adopted the guidelines for operational programmes of action, and requested the secretariat of the League of Arab States, in cooperation with ESCWA, to develop these programmes into operational activities. These three areas constitute the core of the action plans for the global conferences, and have special implications for the implementation of WSSD.

HABITAT II

ECLAC's first Habitat II follow-up activity will be the fifth Regional Meeting of Ministers and High-level Authorities of the Housing and Urban Development Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean which will take place in Kingston, Jamaica on November 12 - 15. A preparatory meeting has taken place during September 8 - 10, with the secretarial support of ECLAC.