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Background
The World Summit for Social Development was held at Copenhagen in 1995 to forge agreement on social challenges and responses to them. It chose social integration as one of three themes, together with poverty eradication and employment creation. The Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Programme of Action established a new consensus to place people at the centre of our concerns for sustainable development.
Member States made commitments to promote social integration to create “a society for all”, through fostering inclusive societies that are stable, safe and just and that are based on the promotion and protection of all human rights, as well as on non-discrimination, tolerance, respect for diversity, equality of opportunity, solidarity, security, and participation of all people, including disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and persons.
The society for all is one in which people play an active role for peace and development within an enabling environment created by governments, and in partnership with the United Nations and others. To these ends, the 24th Special Session of the General Assembly resolved to strengthen the effectiveness of organizations and mechanisms working for the prevention and peaceful resolution of conflicts, and to increase the capability of relevant United Nations bodies to promote social integration in post conflict situations.
The United Nations Charter, in its preamble, enshrined a determination in the name of “We the peoples ----to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, and for these ends, inter alia, to “”practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours”.
The recent Secretary-General’s report, “ In Larger Freedom: towards development, security, and human rights for all”, proposes a collective response to the multiple threats and challenges faced by people everywhere, whether it is extreme poverty, endemic disease, climate change, or violence, genocide”, or civil war.
In a rapidly changing world, where globalization and technological advance are taking place with an unprecedented speed, peoples everywhere are equally experiencing drastic but silent social transitions, whether they are in developed or developing countries, or countries in economic transition, urban cities or rural villages, post-conflict or peaceful nations. This rapid social transformation holds opportunities and risks. It can lead to better economic opportunities and better quality of life, or social distress/tension, and social disintegration.
Efforts to facilitate people’s full participation, and foster mutual understanding and accommodation through participatory dialogue, are ever more needed now to build a safe, stable and just society for all, and achieve sustainable development and peace.
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