UN social development panel approves text linking pledges of 1995 to goals for 2015

Having agreed that the social impact of globalization deserves further study, the United Nations Commission for Social Development today said policies to provide full employment and eradicate poverty should champion social integration and protect human rights in stable, safe and just societies.

In a declaration, which will go to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for approval before being sent to the full General Assembly, the panel stressed "that policies and programmes designed to achieve poverty eradication should include specific measures to foster social integration, including by providing marginalized socio-economic sectors and groups with equal access to opportunities."

The United Nations Commission for Social Development today said policies to provide full employment and eradicate poverty should champion social integration and protect human rights in stable, safe and just societies.

Development strategies should be based on "full, freely chosen and productive employment" respecting rights at work under conditions of equity, equality, security and dignity, it said.

On the 10th anniversary of the World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen, Denmark, the 53-member Commission has been meeting this week – yesterday and today at the ministerial level – to review the progress made in fulfilling the pledges made then in the summit's Declaration and Programme of Action.

Those texts called for the elimination of poverty, the promotion of productive employment, the creation of socially integrated societies, inevitably involving large numbers of policies, implementation strategies and coordinators.

The Commission, chaired by South Africa, was also preparing for the General Assembly's ministerial review next September of the five years that have passed since the 2000 Millennium Declaration made more specific commitments, summarized in the Millennium Development Goals designed to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

It said the Copenhagen commitments and the MDGs "are mutually reinforcing and that the Copenhagen commitments are crucial to a coherent, people-centred approach to development."

The economies of much of Africa and other least developed countries needed technical and financial assistance both nationally and through such regional initiatives as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the Commission said.