High-level officials to convene at UN to tackle global economic crisis
23 Jun 2009
A major high-level United Nations gathering aimed at tackling the global economic meltdown and its effects on the developing world is set to kick off on Wednesday at the world body’s Headquarters in New York.
“Let’s hope and let’s continue praying that we will have a conference that is up to the exigencies of the gravity of the crisis confronting humankind,” General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto, the event’s organizer, told a press conference today.
Mr. D’Escoto also told reporters that he was “relieved” that a revised outcome document for adoption at the end of the three-day meeting has been finalized, stressing that the gathering is “not concerned with the good of some, but the good of all.”
The UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development aims to assess the “worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression,” providing “a uniquely inclusive forum to address issues of urgent concern to all nations,” according to the summit’s website.
A commission of experts – established by Mr. D’Escoto and compromised of economists and finance officials from all regions – submitted recommendations on immediate and longer-term measures relating to the global financial system, as well as practical proposals for reforming the international financial architecture, which helped form the basis of the draft outcome document.
The Assembly President underscored the need for leaders to help the world’s developing countries, which had no hand in creating the crisis, to cope with the global recession, noting that the World Bank recently predicted that the consequences of this crisis among the “most vulnerable, those that don’t have safety nets, is going to be devastating.”
Source:UN
