Content tagged with Global financial and economic crisis

This note consolidates the support offered by the UN system under each of the nine Joint Crisis Initiatives, proposed by HLCP and endorsed by CEB on 5 April 2009, and provides contact details of focal points making the available resources easily accessible for UNCTs.

The communiqué was adopted by the Executive Heads at the CEB spring session retreat held in Paris on 5 April 2009, emphasizing the need to assist countries and the global community to confront the crisis, accelerate recovery, and build a fair and inclusive system of globalization based on sustainable, economic, social and environmental development for all, while facing the future in a spirit of conviction of the need for transformational change.

Hunger is on the increase across the developing world with tens of millions more people facing food insecurity and malnutrition. The economic downturn is exacerbating the impact of the food crisis, which brought the total number of hungry close to one billion - one in six persons - and with a child dying of hunger every six seconds. Food prices remain volatile and may spike again as droughts and floods and climate-related events affect harvests.

The current crisis is global and originates in the developed world. Governments around the world are taking unprecedented action to avert the collapse of the financial system. Much of the focus to date has been on stabilizing financial markets, restoring credit liquidity and reactivating the economy. In a number of developed and emerging economies, financial rescue measures have been complemented with the announcement of aggressive fiscal measures in the form of lower taxes and higher government spending. The amount of the fiscal packages is often without precedent.

This paper has been prepared for the consideration of CEB by the Chair of HLCP as a result of the discussions held by HLCP at its meeting of 26 and 27 February 2009 on the impacts of the global financial and economic crisis. It reflects a revised version of the Issue Paper 1 prepared by the Chair of HLCP for that discussion, on the basis of a very rich set of contributions provided by CEB member organizations upon request from the Chair of HLCP to the respective Executive Heads. The compendium 2 of contributions received is also available to CEB.

At its meeting in Geneva on 26-27 February 2009, the HLCP discussed extensively a preliminary version of this paper, submitted by the Chair, on the basis of a very rich set of contributions by all agencies. The CEB Paris meeting resulted in a robust exchange of views during which CEB members endorsed the course of action proposed by the HLCP and supported the various initiatives for joint action contained in the Issue Paper prepared by the Chair of the HLCP.

A letter from the Chair of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) , on 1 September 2009, to alert UN country teams of the initiatives. In the letter she called for UN country teams to respond to the crisis by applying the nine JCIs.

As one of the "joint crisis initiatives" taken by the Chiefs Executives Board (CEB) of the United Nations System, UN-DESA developed an Integrated Monitoring and Analysis System (IMAS) aimed at establishing a reliable monitoring and analysis system to alert policy makers about vulnerabilities that could hurt countries under changing global economic conditions. IMAS tries to address three challenges: