Joseph Stiglitz addresses Joint Meeting of ECOSOC and 2nd Committee

The 2023 Joint Meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the Economic and Financial Committee of the General Assembly (Second Committee), featured Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, as a keynote speaker. Mr. Stiglitz addressed the current challenges that position commodity-dependent developing countries in economic vulnerability and the need for structural changes in the international market structure to address this issue.

On 10 October 2023, FSDO/DESA led the organization of the 2023 Joint Meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the Economic and Financial Committee of the General Assembly (Second Committee), co-convened with UNCTAD. The theme was “Leveraging Commodities for Sustainable Economic Development.” The event brought to the core the need to support commodity-dependent countries in breaking the cycle of relying on raw commodities with low value-added, which has limited countries’ resources to achieve sustainable development goals. Participants put forward many solutions to make commodities enablers of the SDGs. The event also had remarks from member states, the Second Committee Chair, and the ECOSOC President on challenges and opportunities to leverage countries’ primary products for Sustainable Development.