General Assembly — Session 6

Most active countries

• Finland
  2
• Iraq
  1
• Ethiopia
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• Philippines
  1
• Cyprus
  1
• Sudan
  1
• Iceland
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• Bangladesh
  1
• Greece
  1
• Egypt
  1
• United Arab Emirates
  1
• Belarus
  1
• Cuba
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• Kazakhstan
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• Japan
  1

Top agenda items

• Culture of peace Note by the Secretary-General (A/61/175) Draft resolution (A/61/L.11) The Acting President (spoke in Arabic): The Assembly has before it a note by the Secretary-General transmitting the report of the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), document A/61/175. I give the floor to the representative of the Philippines to introduce draft resolution A/61/L.11.
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• Report of the Economic and Social Council Report of the Economic and Social Council (A/61/3) Note by the Secretary-General (A/61/273) The Acting President (spoke in Arabic): I would like to recall that, pursuant to General Assembly resolution 58/316, of 1 July 2004, the Assembly, on the recommendation of the General Committee, decided, at its 2nd plenary meeting, on 13 September 2006, to consider agenda item 42 in its entirety in plenary meeting, on the understanding that the administrative, programme and budgetary aspects should be dealt with by the Fifth Committee. At the same meeting, the Assembly took note of the clarification that, in implementing resolution 58/316 to consider item 42 in its entirety in plenary meeting, the relevant parts of chapter I of the report that are under agenda items already allocated to the Main Committees will be considered by the Committee concerned for final action by the General Assembly. Under this item, the Assembly has before it the report of the Economic and Social Council (A/61/3), a report of the Secretary-General (A/61/370), and the report of the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (A/61/273). I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Ali Hachani, President of the Economic and Social Council, to introduce the report of the Council. Mr. Hachani (Tunisia), President of the Economic and Social Council: I thank you for this opportunity to introduce the 2006 report of the Economic and Social Council. Development — together with peace and security, human rights and strengthening the United Nations — was a central concern of world Leaders at the 2005 World Summit. They placed the Economic and Social Council at the centre of efforts to monitor and advance implementation of the United Nations Development Agenda, in a unified and coherent way. Thus the common thrust of the Council’s session this year was the follow-up to the commitments made at the Summit. I will briefly highlight some of the key outcomes of the Council’s work during the past year and then focus on the future, including the new responsibilities assigned to the Economic and Social Council by the Summit. This year’s special high-level meeting of the Council with the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development helped maintain the momentum of the Summit for accelerating progress towards the agreed development goals. Advancing the realization of the Monterrey Consensus was seen as a critical element to that end. This meeting represents the centrepiece of our dialogue on the global partnership for development. As I proposed at the conclusion of the meeting, I intend to start exploring how to enhance the impact of the dialogue and to initiate consultations with all stakeholders in this regard. The Economic and Social Council’s high-level segment put productive employment and decent work squarely at the forefront of the development agenda. In particular, the ministerial declaration pertaining to employment generation and decent work for all adopted at the end of the segment identifies a number of concrete steps to make the goal of full and productive employment and decent work a central objective of national and international policies. The need to fulfil this pledge, to which leaders committed at the Summit, cannot be overemphasized. Widening gaps between skilled and unskilled workers, and between the formal and informal economies, have contributed to persistent and deepening inequalities worldwide. The General Assembly may wish to build on the work of the Economic and Social Council on this central issue. The Council’s coordination segment dealt with another aspect of the on-going efforts to push the development agenda forward: how to translate economic growth into effective social development, including the eradication of poverty and hunger. The debate showed that we do not have definite answers. The Council, therefore, asked the United Nations system to continue to study this question. An important feature of the coordination segment was the follow-up event on avian flu, which took place in the presence of a number of high-level representatives from Governments and relevant international and non- governmental organizations. Discussions during this panel demonstrated the importance of the Economic and Social Council’s coordinating role and its ability to shape responses to emerging challenges of this nature. The Council’s work on the operational activities for development was of special significance this year. For the first time, the Economic and Social Council launched the triennial review of funding for development cooperation. The debate on the subject highlighted the diverging trends between core and non- core resource flows, the increasing complexity of funding mechanisms and the associated challenges to the financial sustainability of United Nations system’s development cooperation efforts. The Council evaluated how far the United Nations development system has gone in implementing the Assembly’s guidance during the last Triennial Comprehensive Policy Review. Expectations are high for the 2007 Triennial Comprehensive Policy Review, given the unprecedented focus on the United Nations role in development cooperation and on the need for greater coherence and impact in its work. During the humanitarian affairs segment, the Council gave guidance on how to reinforce the coordination of the humanitarian activities of the United Nations system and of others. It gave strong support for the humanitarian reform agenda and made several proposals for dividing the work of the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly on humanitarian policy issues. The Economic and Social Council is vested with the authority to promote an integrated approach to peace and development. The call to address the root causes of the world’s threats and challenges involves unlocking and strengthening the implementation of the United Nations development agenda. Ultimately, development and security can come only from integrated policies that promote poverty eradication, sustainable development and human rights of our societies. The Assembly may want to draw upon the work of the Council in this area, especially for its deliberations on the prevention of armed conflict. In the general segment, the Council focused on consolidating and coordinating the work of its subsidiary bodies. The Council’s role in that sphere is becoming all the more important as we proceed to implement the development agenda. To that end, the Economic and Social Council had invited the functional commissions and other relevant subsidiary bodies to examine their methods of work, and this year several commissions have given renewed attention to their working methods. Moreover, the agreement to extend the Economic and Social Council’s ad hoc advisory groups on Guinea-Bissau and Haiti is a clear recognition of the useful contribution the Council can make by promoting an integrated approach in that area. We now need to ensure that the lessons learned during the Council’s experience benefit the future work of the Peacebuilding Commission through continuous engagement between the relevant bodies. It is also noteworthy that the Council adopted a resolution on promoting youth employment, in which it urges Governments to consider youth employment as integral to their overall strategies for development and collective security, and encouraged mainstreaming youth employment in poverty reduction strategies. The Council achieved another major breakthrough in crystallizing its own role and the role of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development in the follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society. Agreement on a clear and well-defined intergovernmental process, including the additional new tasks for the Commission, together with broad multi-stakeholder engagement in the recently launched Global Alliance for Information and Communications Technologies and Development, carry the potential to make a strong and far-reaching contribution to strengthening the United Nations role in this area and putting information and communications technologies in the service of the United Nations development agenda. The 2005 World Summit placed important responsibilities on the Economic and Social Council for reviewing and monitoring the implementation of the United Nations development agenda. Responding to this call will be an important tenet of the Council’s work in the coming years. So, let me share with the Assembly what I personally see as the opportunities that the new functions of the Council offer, especially for the General Assembly. Obviously, the resolution Member States are finalizing will give, I hope, more detailed guidance on how the new mandates of the Economic and Social Council are to be made operational. First, the annual ministerial-level substantive review provides a new mechanism for the review of progress and for promoting implementation of the outcomes of United Nations conferences and summits, including internationally agreed development goals. In my view, the annual review, owing to its ministerial participation, can identify implementation deficiencies at the global, regional and national levels, as well as their linkages, and help the international community track policies in support of the agreed development goals and to make necessary adjustments. I hope the General Assembly will draw upon the work of the Council in the annual meeting on development that, pursuant to its resolution 60/265, the Assembly must hold during the debate on the follow-up to the Millennium Declaration and the 2005 World Summit Outcome. Secondly, the high-level biennial Development Cooperation Forum provides a unique opportunity for Member States to keep global development aid cooperation issues high on the international community’s agenda. The Forum should have a real impact in promoting international development cooperation and gearing development cooperation to support the achievement of internationally agreed development goals. The Forum brings together all development cooperation partners for a dialogue on key policy issues. Thus it will scale-up actions to perfect the link between normative and operational work of the United Nations, and help translate what we have learned into improved policies, strategy and practice at all levels. Within the implementation architecture for the development agenda, on the normative side, we have a three-tier structure: the General Assembly; the Economic and Social Council; and the functional commissions, as well as a number of funds and programmes. The World Summit has challenged these bodies to organize their work in order to maximize their individual contributions for the effective realization of the goals set out in the development agenda. Do the current agendas of both the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council respond adequately to the priorities set out in the United Nations development agenda? If not, could these bodies’ respective work be streamlined to allow the Assembly’s Second and Third Committees and the Economic and Social Council to have a substantive discussion on key issues and achieve an integrated overview of them? While the recurrence of certain topics in various intergovernmental forums illustrates their importance and urgency, Member States might, for instance, better utilize the Economic and Social Council for initiating work on certain topics and make the most of the Council’s new monitoring and review function in the implementation of certain United Nations legislation. Each body should have maximum value added and approach issues from a unique angle. In this regard, we are all anticipating, of course, the report of the High-level Panel, which will lead, I hope, to further discussion of ways for increasing coherence in the work of the United Nations in these areas. We have already taken important strides towards a strong and more broadly capable Economic and Social Council. On the basis of the General Assembly’s deliberations on the Panel’s recommendations, we must also make the United Nations a better tool for development activities on the ground. Many other outcomes of the Council are of key relevance to the work of the General Assembly, such as on human rights, social development and gender mainstreaming, to mention only a few. Outcomes in these areas, among others, will help the Second and Third Committees in their work. My experience as President of the Council has shown me the potential of the Economic and Social Council in meeting many of the critical concerns of the international community. The profile, the convening power and the consensus building opportunity that have been the trademark of the United Nations conferences in the last decade and-a-half can be incorporated into the Council. Indeed, the inclusive spirit of United Nations international conferences permeated this year’s session of the Council. In particular, the high-level segment showed that the Economic and Social Council can effectively address cross-cutting issues in a comprehensive manner, with the participation of a significant number of ministers and high-level officials carrying diverse portfolios, as well as with the involvement of development partners and organizational decision-makers. The consultative status that the Economic and Social Council offers to the non-governmental organization community in allowing it to contribute to its work is another unique feature of this Charter organ. It is a feature that should, I believe, be strengthened. Finally, in order to make the Economic and Social Council’s old and new functions fully operational, it is important to support them with sufficient funding and to give the Bureau of the Economic and Social Council the means to carry out its duties. The adoption of the resolution on the follow-up to the development outcome of the Summit was important. Hopefully, the ongoing consultations will be completed soon and lead to the adoption of a resolution on strengthening the Economic and Social Council. These two resolutions will serve as guide-posts in our efforts to accelerate implementation. I would like to close with the observation that a more substantive and interactive relationship is developing between the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council. This relationship should help in providing meaningful and practical orientation to the international community in the implementation of the United Nations development agenda. In this process, key new functions given to the Economic and Social Council must play a central role, enabling the Council to serve as the bridge between policymaking and implementation in the area of economic and social development.
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• Return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin Note by the Secretary-General (A/61/176) Draft resolution (A/61/L.15) The Acting President (spoke in Arabic): The Assembly has before it a note by the Secretary-General transmitting the report of the Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, circulated in document A/61/176. I give the floor to the representative of Greece to introduce draft resolution A/61/L.15.
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