The Director of the UNESCWA Sustainable Development and Productivity Division, Ms. Anhar Hegazi today said, “Despite the achievements of Arab countries in answering the basic needs of their populations, including providing housing, infrastructure, and social and service sectors as well as ensuring the continuity of these efforts, the absence of equal rights and the gap in answering the basic needs of various social segments represents a major threat to development results and to achieving sustainability.

UN-ESCWA Executive Secretary Bader Omar AlDafa considered today that the Regional Commission region sufferers from a variety of pressures that endanger the sustainability of its water resources. UN-ESCWA has therefore set the management of water resources at the top of its work priority and works to implement several projects to strengthen the good and sustainable management of these resources. AlDafa made these remarks in the first session of the Ministerial Forum on Water that the G77 and China are holding in Oman on 23-25 February.

The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and UNSD are cooperating to initiate the formulation of a national strategy and implementation programme for the 2008 SNA and supporting system-wide socio-economic statistics, in collaboration with the Arab Institute for Training and Research in Statistics (AITRS), and the Statistics Department of the league of Arab States (LAS). The main objective of the initiative is strengthening the national statistical system (NSS) for improved policy making with the support of high policy-making in the Arab region.