بيانات صحفية

1 كانون الأول/ديسمبر 2011

Beirut

ESCWA Technical Committee Meets in Beirut

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Beirut, 1 December 2011 (UN Information Service) — ESCWA Executive Secretariat opened today the Sixth Meeting of the Technical Committee at the UN House in Beirut. The meeting will conclude tomorrow Friday 2 December. UN Under-Secretary-General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf delivered an opening statement saying “our region is experiencing major changes that require us to reconsider the development policies that we have followed during the past two decades and review the intellectual foundations that ruled them. “The clear failures of the model adopted by many of our countries, and which was based on the “Washington Consensus” without acknowledging the social, environmental and political dimensions they deserve, pushed us towards creating a "New Development Paradigm," taking into account various dimensions of development from a comprehensive and sustainable perspective,” she said. “We started taking active steps towards developing our partnerships by working with regional and international organizations, to become more capable of meeting our countries’ needs,” Khalaf added. For example, we are developing a partnership with the League of Arab States through reviewing the joint memorandum of cooperation that has not been updated since 1983. “We are also focusing on forming a common plan of action that will better utilize the parties’ capacities, and we are activating the Regional Coordination Mechanism between UN organizations to be more dynamic and open to civil society organizations and other organizations outside the UN system, such as the Islamic Development Bank,” she said. Khalaf concluded by saying "we are actively expanding our umbrella to include all Arab countries to give Member States greater value in international forums, and to ensure that non-member countries are able to participate in the activities we do.” Head of the Technical Committee and Secretary General of Jordan’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation Saleh Al-Kharabsheh said the region is witnessing exceptional circumstances that doubled the traditional challenges that our countries have faced.“These circumstances are represented by the decrease in growth rates, increase in unemployment rates and poverty, the challenges of water security and energy supplies, increase in food prices and public debt ratios and the steady increase in population, forming the main reasons of political and economic instability in our region, which require special efforts to advance and develop programs and policies that aim to achieve political and economic reforms,” he said. Al-Kharabsheh stressed the importance of the meeting, which discusses the Committee’s strategic framework for the biennium 2014 - 2015, pointing out that "despite some efforts made by our states as well as regional and international development institutions to achieve acceptable levels of growth, attempting to involve youths and motivating women to play greater roles, these efforts are still below the required level.” He added that “we must rethink about the mechanisms and policies used and we have to rearrange developmental priorities and focus on added value and competitive sectors and their impact on growth rates and development’s revenues. We also should give attention to the sustainable management of natural resources and the steady growth of population the utmost importance by building human and institutional capacities of Member Countries to develop policies and strategies on both national and regional levels”. The two-day meeting will tackle key issues related to the future work of ESCWA, such as the proposed programme of work for the biennium 2014-2015. It will also address ongoing preparations for the 27th ESCWA session, in addition to progress made in the work of the Executive Secretariat, and the implementation of recommendations made by the Technical Committee in its fifth meeting. Participants will exchange the views of member countries on successes and areas of improvement in ESCWA’s work. They will also set the date and venue of the seventh meeting of the Technical Committee.
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