Representatives of government, international organizations, academia and civil society will participate on October 3-5, 2023 in the Fifth Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the main theme will be the social institutional framework in the region.
The Conference is organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Government of Chile and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The event will take place in person at ECLAC’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile and contemplates the holding of the UNDP’s XV Ministerial Forum for Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Civil society will meet on October 2, prior to the start of the official activities.
At the conference, a document entitled Institutional frameworks for social policy in Latin America and the Caribbean: a central element in advancing towards inclusive development will be presented and five panel discussions will be held to address the relevant matters related to social institutions that are identified as a priority in that document and in the Regional Agenda for Inclusive Social Development. [1]
The Regional Conference on Social Development was created in May 2014 as one of ECLAC’s subsidiary bodies [2]. Its objectives include fostering improved national policies on social development; promoting international, regional and bilateral cooperation among offices and institutions; and examining multidimensional poverty and making progress on the measurement of poverty, inequality and structural gaps, in coordination with the work being carried out by the Commission’s other subsidiary bodies, in particular the Statistical Conference of the Americas.
It also seeks to exchange experiences on social matters and accompany and provide technical inputs to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and other regional forums, and to contribute from Latin America and the Caribbean’s perspective to the debates and proposals examined by the United Nations Commission for Social Development.
The First Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean [3] was held in Lima, Peru on November 2-4, 2015; the Second Conference [4] was held in Montevideo, Uruguay on November 25-27, 2017; the Third Conference [5] was held in Mexico City on October 1-3, 2019; and the Fourth Conference [6] took place virtually on October 26-28, 2021. In 2022, meanwhile, the Fifth Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Social Development [7] was held.