Commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the world summit for social development
Twenty years ago, the World Summit for Social Development was held in Copenhagen on 6-12 March 1995.
The outcome of the 1995 Summit was recognizing that social development could not be pursued as a separate sector nor could it be pursued as piecemeal initiatives but required an orientation of values, objectives and priorities towards the well-being of all.
Major progress has been made since the 1995 conference
Poverty and social and economic inequalities are still huge global issues. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that there are about 805 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world suffering from chronic undernourishment. Of these people, 791 million live in developing countries.
To solve these inequalities and issues of poverty, integrated thinking is necessary in policy making and implementation. Integrated thinking is thinking about social, economic, and environmental issues through a parallel lens; this type of thinking would lead to policies being drafted that would cover all the goals expressed in the Summit and not just specific ones. This concept was extremely stressed in this year’s Summit because in the 90′s the issue of the economy took precedence over other social issues which fell by the wayside.