AMONG ISSUES ADDRESSED IN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL

Afternoon Panel Discusses Strengthened

Cooperation between Functional Commissions, Council

“The sustainable option for addressing the current economic and social deprivation [of the Palestinian people] lies in lifting the occupation –- an occupation that has only brought misery and suffering to the Palestinian people for more than 37 years”, the Permanent Observer of Palestine told the 2004 substantive session of the Economic and Social Council today.

The Council was taking up its agenda item on the economic and social repercussions of the Israeli occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan.

The Palestine’s Observer said Israel, the occupying Power, had committed countless war crimes. Its policies of confiscating land and building illegal settlements had continued unabated. Another crime was the construction of Israel’s expansionist wall, despite international condemnations and contrary to the International Court of Justice’s conclusion. Other violations included frequent collective punishment, confiscation of land, exploitation of water resources, home demolitions, restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinian persons and goods, administrative detentions and the harassment, physical mistreatment and torture of Palestinian detainees and prisoners. Israel must be compelled to respect its obligations under international law.

Israel’s representative, while acknowledging that the Palestinian people were suffering, said Israelis were suffering as well. Terror and its repercussions affected everyone. More than 25 per cent of Israeli children now lived below the poverty line and, largely because of terror, foreign investment had turned away from the region. The “biased report in front of us” did not mention the devastation done to the Israeli economy in the past three years or the resulting pain and hardship.

He said cooperation towards ending suffering was a more useful approach than arguing about the degrees of suffering. The Israeli disengagement plan was providing hope for a better future and should be welcomed as a step towards ushering in a new era of possibility and renewal. Before the onslaught of terrorism, the rate of unemployment among the Palestinian people had decreased by almost 50 per cent, and peace had drawn investment from throughout the world. With the onset of terrorism, however, that trend was sharply reversed.

Reacting to comments made, Mervat Tallawy, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), who also introduced the Secretary-General’s report on the issue, said the Secretariat had prepared the report according to a mandate to analyse the impact of the occupation on the social and economic situation of the Palestinian people, not to examine the suffering of the Israeli people. Nothing in the report’s allegations was meant to be against one party in favour of the other.

Turning the Council’s attention to the “Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples by the specialized agencies and the international institutions associated with the United Nations”, the representative of Papua New Guinea said the Special Committee on decolonization dealt with 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories, most of them small island Territories. In recent years, the United Nations system had continued to assist the Territories through projects in sustainable development, legal reforms, and trade policy, environmental management, health and education. The report on the issue was introduced by Tamara Pozdnyakova, Officer-in Charge, Decolonization Unit, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

He said the conclusions and recommendations of a recent seminar of the Special Committee in Papua New Guinea had devoted a separate chapter to cooperation with the Council, including ensuring better access of the Territories to relevant United Nations programmes and projects and, in some cases, formulation of specific programmes for the Territories aimed at furthering self-government.

In an informal meeting, the Council heard from a panel consisting of chairpersons of its functional commissions on the theme “strengthening cooperation and collaboration between the functional commissions and ECOSOC”, which concentrated on the upcoming events in 2005, including the September 2005 high-level segment of the General Assembly dedicated to the follow-up of the 2000 Millennium Summit.

After panellists described their commissions’ work and their preparations for 2005, speakers stressed the importance of the joint meetings between the chairs of the functional commissions and the Council, and the need for adequate resources for such meetings. The link between the commissions’ work to next year’s review of the Millennium Development Goals was underlined, as was the importance of cooperation with other organizations, including regional groups. Some panellists noted that, as the commissions wished to have an impact on the big review events in 2005, it was important to hold high-level meetings in preparation for that event. One speaker made the point that commission members must adhere closely to their mandates, noting that there had been flagrant breaches of the principle of non-selectivity in the work of some commissions.

Panellists were the chairs of the Commission for Social Development, Commission on Human Rights, Commission on Population and Development, Commission on the Status of Women, Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, Statistical Commission, United Nations Forum on Forests, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Commission on Sustainable Development, and the Commission for Science and Technology for Development,

In other business, a number of draft resolutions was introduced. Regarding a text entitled “Commission on Human Rights resolution 2004/117 on human rights and human responsibilities” (document E/2004/L.21), the Council intends to seek advice as to the legal validity of the Council’s adoption of resolutions from the Commission on Human Rights.

The Council also concluded consideration of its agenda item “Coordination, programme and other questions”, addressing such issues as information and communication technologies and tobacco control.

The representatives of Cuba, Netherlands (on behalf of the European Union), Qatar (on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China), Syria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Belarus, Jamaica and Japan spoke, as did representatives of the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Council will continue its general segment at 10 a.m. Tuesday, 20 July.