“In
terms of food security, poverty reduction, the promotion of youth
employment, gender equality, our messages have the same objectives”,
says Néstor Osorio, President of the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC), fresh from his private audience Saturday morning with
Pope Francis.
As Colombia’s Ambassador to the United Nations in
New York, he has taken over the one year term of office at the helm of
the third major ‘pillar’ of the massive UN organization. Together with
the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, ECOSOC has broad
responsibility for some 70% of the human and financial resources of the
entire UN system. Above all its main task lies in promoting economic
and social stability among member nations.
“Food security; this
is one of the issues that I have been touching on here in Rome, in my
audience with the Pope and in my meeting’s with the directors of FAO
(United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) and the World Food
Program. And how we can approach a situation where in no more than 20
or 30 years the world’s population will be 9 billion people and the
amount of food that is going to be required will the double of what it
is today. So this is one of the challenges we are facing in our work at
ECOSOC”.
Another challenge according to the Colombian Diplomat
is planning the post 2015 period, the date set for the Millennium
Development Goals.
“2015 is when the MDGs are supposed to be
evaluated, not terminated or concluded, but evaluated. So [our task is
to ] evaluate how we can take further steps in the post 2015 period in a
more comprehensive and committed way with all the actors from developed
and developing countries”.
In this the ECOSOC President sees collaboration with the Holy See as key:
“I
think that when you find, I would say affinities, when you see that the
message is taken on board, identified as an urgent and basic need, then
you can combine the messages … and you can work together”.