The Economic and Social Council, holding its first in-person meeting in 2021, adopted a range of decisions today, extending COVID-19-related procedures, rescheduling delayed meetings and filling several vacancies, including on the Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women).
The Commission for Social Development concluded its fifty-ninth session today, forwarding four draft resolutions, all without a vote, to the Economic and Social Council for consideration, including one that addressed this year’s priority theme for the 46-member subsidiary body — the role of digital technologies on social development and the well-being of all.
With the pandemic exposing massive disparities in access to health, education and employment across the world, countries must urgently usher in a socially just transition towards sustainable development — first and foremost by enacting policies that close the digital divide, United Nations officials emphasized today, as the Commission for Social Development opened its fifty-ninth session.
The Economic and Social Council adopted three decisions related to the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations and postponed a decision today, stemming from COVID-19 pandemic-related changes to its working methods, on whether to reopen its 2020 session to reconsider the draft ministerial declaration of its high-level political forum on sustainable development, held in July.
The Economic and Social Council elected several countries to fill 15 outstanding vacancies in eight of its subsidiary bodies while also nominating Germany as a member of the Committee for Programme and Coordination.
The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) held an exceptional one‑day 2020 resumed session today owing to the COVID‑19 pandemic, during which it recommended suspending the consultative status of 187 organizations with the Economic and Social Council due to their failure to provided quadrennial reports for a specified period.
The Economic and Social Council adopted the provisional agenda for the 2021 session of the Committee on Non‑Governmental Organizations today, adopting a decision that adjusts the subsidiary body’s meeting schedule in response to the impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic.
With the world still deep in the grip of COVID‑19, many countries find themselves no more than a crisis or two away from sliding into conflict, speakers warned today during a virtual joint meeting of the Economic and Social Council and the Peacebuilding Commission that focused on ways to forge solidarity and develop conflict-sensitive responses to the worst global pandemic in a century.
The Economic and Social Council, holding the first plenary meeting of its 2021 session in the General Assembly Hall today, adopted four resolutions and one decision, took note of more than 50 texts adopted by the silence procedure during COVID-19-related restrictions at Headquarters and filled subsidiary body vacancies, but failed to agree on a draft ministerial declaration on sustainable development ahead of the Decade of Action on achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Commission on the Status of Women opened its sixty-fourth session today, adopting a political declaration commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which together offer the world’s most progressive blueprint for achieving gender equality.
