..Press Release................................ UNESCAP News Services

Date 4 June 2007
Press Release No: G/23/2007

UN meeting addresses high unemployment in Pacific island countries

Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) -- A UN meeting aimed at creating much needed jobs in the Pacific island countries opened today in Suva, Fiji, bringing together experts from across the Pacific and from UN and donor agencies. The meeting will also promote an international strategy on helping small island countries to develop.

“The issue of unemployment in Pacific small island developing states is fast approaching alarming proportions”, said Mr. Hervé Berger, Head of Pacific Operations Centre, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). “It is fuelled by high population growth rates, made more complex by a rapidly urbanizing Pacific and an inability to generate a sustainable rate of economic growth through correct implementation of sound economic policies,”

Mr. Berger noted that the Pacific Island countries have been caught in a vicious cycle of low economic growth and high levels of unemployment or under employment. “New and innovative approaches are required to break out of this cycle”, he emphasized.

“In the Pacific, we do not experience extreme poverties in the Asian and African sense. Nevertheless, we find every year more and more people are falling under poverty lines. Access to productive work that provides an adequate income for working women and men and their families is the surest route out of poverty,” the Director of Suva Office of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Mr. A M. Zakaria, noted.

Experts attending the meeting are tasked with examining the current labour market situation in the Pacific island region and are expected to propose innovative solutions.

The experts will also review progress made in achieving sustainable development in the Pacific. The key UN framework for promoting sustainable development in small island developing states (SIDS) is the Mauritius Strategy, endorsed at the Global Sustainable Development Conference for SIDS in Mauritius in 2005.

“The Mauritius Strategy is one of the most important UN documents for small island developing states. It sets out the basic principles as well as specific actions required at the national, regional and international levels to support sustainable development in small island developing states,” said Mr. Berger,

He noted that awareness of the Mauritius Strategy was very low among both Pacific island governments and donors. “This is a pity, as it could play an important role in engaging the international community to support sustainable development in the Pacific.”

Mr. Berger also noted that sustainable development was too often seen only as an environmental issue, when it should be seen as a broader issue covering economic and social development as well as environmental sustainability. .

UNESCAP Pacific Operations Centre is organizing the meeting. The first segment – the Expert Group Meeting on Labour Markets in the Pacific – is on 4-5 June and is jointly organized with the International Labour Organization. The second segment, held 6-7 June, is an Expert Group Meeting on Mauritius Strategy Implementation.

Attending the meeting are government and non-governmental representatives from the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Experts from the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat, the Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Centre (IMF), the University of the South Pacific (USP), ILO, UN Development Programme, UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and from other bilateral and multilateral development agencies are participating in the meeting.

For further information, please contact:

Siliga Kofe, Economic Affairs Officer
UN ESCAP Pacific Operations Centre
Tel: +(679) 3319669
E-mail: epoc@un.org
Web: www.unescap.org/epoc