Under General Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) that the FPSC has since 2004, our organization is making its annual statement to present at the high-level meeting of ECOSOC taking place the first week of July in New York. The subject of debate this year is the “Promotion of productive capacity, employment and decent work for poverty eradication in the context of inclusive economic growth, sustainable and equitable at all levels to achieve the Millennium Development Goals”. Our contribution is to highlight the experience of the FPSC in development projects focused on vocational training for employment in the Middle East and Latin America, where we have been working for two decades.
Our representative in New York, Micaela O’Herron, attended an February 6th event that primarily discussed the Report on the United Nations Global Youth, which was published recently and provides interesting data on youth unemployment worldwide. This report is from the online discussions that were held with young people around the world. Attending the event was the new president of ECOSOC, Mr. Milos Koterec, who said that unemployment in the developing world is 25%, although this figure does not include underemployment. The participants discussed the serious problems facing young people in getting employment since 2008 in which occurs the outbreak of the greatest financial crisis of the last hundred years.
Speakers discussed the key issues facing young people in obtaining employment. In the developing world, the rate of unemployment is 25%, not including underemployment.
In addition, the FPSC regularly participates in events organized by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA-ECOSOC) of interest to our organization. It should be noted that the UN has designated 2012 “International Year of Cooperatives”. Thus, our representative participated in an event organized by DESA on February 1st and 2nd, which was attended by, among others, D. Juan Pablo de la Iglesia. Agricultural cooperatives were discussed as an option for sustainable development and the case study of cooperatives in Almeria, Spain, was presented as an example of transformation from a poor its network of Development NGOs in Latin American countries (REDI), works in development programs based on the cooperative model in places like Guatemala, Peru and Paraguay.