The Vice President of the Dominican Republic along with Latin American and Caribbean ministers and senior officials who work on social matters will gather in the Dominican Republic on November 1 to participate in the first meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Social Development, organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

At the meeting, ECLAC will present a document entitled The social inequality matrix in Latin America, which addresses some of the core structural aspects of the inequality that characterizes the region.

The study will be commented upon by the Vice President of the Dominican Republic, Margarita Cedeño; Peru’s Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, Cayetana Aljovín; Chile’s Minister of Social Development, Marcos Barraza; and Uruguay’s Deputy Minister of Social Development, Ana Olivera.

In addition, Minister Cayetana Aljovín will present progress on the work that ECLAC is carrying out based on the mandates it was given during the first meeting of the Conference, held in Lima in November 2015. Peru currently serves as Chair of the Conference and its Presiding Officers and is accompanied by Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama and Paraguay as Vice Chairs.

This meeting of the Presiding Officers will take place on the second day of the VIII Ministerial Forum for Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will be inaugurated on October 31 and is being organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Vice Presidency of the Dominican Republic.

The Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean was created via a resolution approved during ECLAC’s Thirty-fifth session, held in May 2014 in Lima.

The establishment of this new subsidiary body of ECLAC seeks to promote improvements in national social development policies as well as to make progress on measuring poverty, inequality and structural gaps, facilitate cooperation among countries and the exchange of experiences, provide technical guidance to numerous regional forums, and contribute from a regional perspective to global debates and proposals.

The first meeting of the Conference, in November 2015, was convened by ECLAC, the Peruvian Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS) and UNDP. Participants included officials from social development ministries and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research centers, other United Nations agencies and intergovernmental bodies.

On that occasion, ECLAC presented the document Inclusive social development: The next generation of policies for overcoming poverty and reducing inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean to countries. After it was analyzed and debated, they requested that the United Nations organization delve further into these issues. The fruit of those efforts is the new publication that will be unveiled during the gathering in the Dominican Republic.

What: First meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

When: Tuesday, November 1, 2016 at 8:30 a.m.

Who:

•         Margarita Cedeño, Vice President of the Dominican Republic.

•         Cayetana Aljovín, Peru’s Minister of Development and Social Inclusion.

•         Marcos Barraza, Chile’s Minister of Social Development.

•         Ana Olivera, Uruguay’s Deputy Minister of Social Development.

•         Laís Abramo, Director of the Social Development Division of ECLAC.

Where:

Renaissance Santo Domingo Jaragua Hotel & Casino.

George Washington Ave. 367. Santo Domingo.