7-9 Aug 2018 Lima, Peru | Conferences and meetings of subsidiary bodies
Representatives of 17 countries of the region meeting at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) adopted today a proposed format for national reports on progress in the implementation of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development and acknowledged the synergies between this intergovernmental agreement of 2013 and the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
This is the tenor of the agreements of the third meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Population and Development (CRPD), held on 4-6 October in Santiago.
The meeting was closed by Patricia Chemor, Secretary-General of the National Council for Population (CONAPO) of Mexico, in her capacity as Chair of the Presiding Officers; Esteban Caballero, Director of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); Paulo Saad, Chief of the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE)-Population Division of ECLAC; and Luis F. Yáñez, Officer-in-Charge of the Office of the Secretary of the Commission.
The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development is a regional instrument adopted in August 2013 that includes measures for integrating population issues into sustainable development, and measures in the areas of childhood, adolescence and youth, ageing, sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, migration, territorial inequality, indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants. An operational guide, adopted in Mexico in 2015, was developed as a technical voluntary instrument to help implement the Consensus.
The countries are due to present their national reports, prepared in the format adopted today, at the third meeting of CRPD, to be held in El Salvador in 2017.
The Presiding Officers valued the contribution that the national reports will make to the review of regional implementation of the 2030 Agenda by the newly established Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, which will hold its first meeting in Mexico in April 2017. They also invited the countries to continue working towards identifying areas of compatibility between the follow-up of the Montevideo Consensus and the 2030 Agenda.
At this meeting, the Presiding Officers also analysed a proposal of indicators for regional follow-up of the Montevideo Consensus, which is intended to ensure comparability between countries and will also be submitted for adoption in El Salvador in 2017. The first regional review will be carried out two years later, at the fourth meeting of the Regional Conference on Population and Development.
In their agreements, the countries also encouraged the continuation of information-sharing and communication between the presiding officers of the various subsidiary bodies of ECLAC, especially the Regional Conference on Women, the Statistical Conference of the Americas and the Regional Conference on Social Development.
Together with Mexico as Chair, the members of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference are Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela. ECLAC serves the Presiding Officers as secretariat.
