On Monday 26 April 2004, at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Latin American and Caribbean Regional Session on Sustainable Development will be held to review the progress, obstacles and challenges facing the region with regard to agreements adopted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002, better known as the Johannesburg Summit.
The meeting has been organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), with cooperation from the Division for Sustainable Development of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) of the United Nations Secretariat. It will run from 10:00 to 11:30 am on Monday 26 in Conference Room No. 1, and will be opened by Bruno Stagno Ugarte, Costa Rican Ambassador and Latin America and the Caribbean's representative in the Bureau of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, and Joseluis Samaniego, Director of ECLAC's Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division.
The meeting forms part of the working agenda for the 12th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CDS-12), to be held in New York from 14-30 April 2004. The main issues to be discussed are human settlements, water and sanitation within the region.
Joseluis Samaniego will present an overview of the status of these three elements in Latin America and the Caribbean. Erminia Maricato, Executive Secretary of Brazil's Ministry of Cities will also speak, along with Humberto Peña, General Director of Water, from Chile's Public Works Ministry; Mirta Roses, Director of the World Health Organization's Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO); and Miguel Solanes, member of the Global Water Partnership's Technical Committee and ECLAC's Regional Advisor on Water Rights.
This will be the first meeting held using the Commission on Sustainable Development new format of bi-annual work cycles (alternating "review" and "policy recommendation" years); its main mandate is to evaluate world progress toward meeting commitments made at the Rio de Janeiro (1992) and Johannesburg (2002) Summits.
