Explanation:
Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, appealed to the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) to put social integration and cohesion at the heart of its work, as it opened its session today with a debate on social development.
Although the world is recovering slowly from the global financial, economic, food and fuel crises, Mr. Sha said the social impacts of those events persist, with employment in advanced economies only due to return to pre-crisis levels by 2015 and millions of people in developing countries pushed to vulnerable employment. Poverty reduction has meanwhile slowed, and education and nutrition initiatives have been set back.
Effective and sustainable implementation of the Action Agenda agreed at the General Assembly’s recent high-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals would require “inclusive policies that put people at the centre of development,” he said. “Policies that reduce unemployment, fight poverty and lessen social injustice. Policies that pursue a society for all.”
Mr. Sha drew attention to a number of challenges, including the rapid ageing of the world’s population (with 2 billion people forecast to be over the age of 60 by 2050), the situation of persons with disabilities (four fifths of whom live in developing countries, mostly in rural areas, and often in poverty), the status of indigenous peoples (“They are among the most disadvantaged people in the world,” he said) and the impact of the financial and economic crisis on young people (who represent 44 per cent of the world’s unemployed).
Yemen’s representative, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries and China, said progress in social development had been “uneven and disappointing”, with more than 1 billion people suffering from hunger and 1.4 billion living in extreme poverty for the first time history. In such a context, he said, implementing the commitments of the World Summit fo
