(18 June 2010) The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, signed a protocol cooperation agreement yesterday with the Executive Director for Operations of the French Development Agency (AFD), Jacques Moineville, during a visit to that country.
The agreement establishes a framework for inter-institutional collaboration in benefit of Latin American and Caribbean nations through technical cooperation and the dissemination of information and publications of mutual interest.
This broad agreement focuses especially in areas such as climate change, sustainable cities, innovative instruments for financing for development tied to fiscal decentralization and triangular cooperation. The first activities as a result of this agreement will be carried out in the Caribbean.
Bárcena was received yesterday by the Director of the Americas and the Caribbean of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of France, Elizabeth Beton Delegue, with whom she discussed the state of progress in cooperation between the Government of France and ECLAC and its future projection as a strategic multi-annual programme.
Today, Bárcena met with Brice Lalonde, Special Ambassador of France for climate change, who is working on the preparation of the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.
During the afternoon, she also met with the Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), José Ángel Gurría.
Later, Bárcena delivered a lecture at the Casa de América Latina in Paris, directed by Alain Rouquie, based the document Time for equality: closing gaps, opening trails presented recently by ECLAC during its Thirty-third Session held in late May in Brasilia. The lecture was attended by intellectuals, researchers, government officials and members of the diplomatic corps in the French capital.
For enquiries, please contact ECLAC's Public Information and Web Services Section. Email: dpisantiago@cepal.org; telephone: (56-2) 210-2040/2149.
