United Nations Radio

ECOSOC president, Sylvie Lucas

Ambassador Sylvie Lucas of Luxembourg, has been elected president of the UN's Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC. She is only the second woman to hold this post. Bissera Kostova sat down with Ambassador Lucas and asked her about the Council's agenda for the year, which will be dominated by the theme of public health.

Lucas: For example we will have in February a big event on philanthropy linked to public health, where we will have two major panels, one looking more at the issue of health for women and girls, how to improve health services and the other one will be, for example, on neglected tropical diseases. We will there work very closely together with the relevant agencies and then foundations, which are active in this area as such. And the idea is actually to try to enlarge the number of partners, the range of partners, who work in this field, to also broaden the interest for these activities and try a little bit to diversify the actors in this field. So there is a whole range of activities. Also, civil society is planning quite a few events to bring all this in, so that in summer when we have, in July the substantive session in ECOSOC, we can try to draw some recommendations, as concrete as possible, for the work of the UN in this field.

Kostova: You said that you see this as an opportunity, because health is a cross-cutting issue, can you explain what you mean?

Lucas: It is because health, all the aspects, for example, when I tell you women/girls, it has aspects for example on maternal health, it has aspects of reproductive heath, it has aspects on gender equality, it has different aspects on health services, it has also an economic and social aspect, how do you organize health services, how do you build them and so it has a lot of ramifications, a lot of interlinkages with other international commitments in different fields, so that is why we think it is a good theme, really, to try to bring development issues forward.

Kostova: The Council is of necessity a super-structure, it coordinates all these agencies, but you've said you want it to be more action-oriented.  How do you propose to do that?

Lucas: This is an ongoing process. It is certainly not something I have invented, or where I could say okay now this is going to be the issue. A lot of good work has been done and efforts made in this respect also by the former president Ambassador Merores, for example, who has taken advantage last year of the provisions to react to an ongoing crisis and to bring ECOSOC together, for example, on the food crisis. I think this certainly was a step in the right direction to bring ECOSOC in and to have the first discussions there. I will also be open to continue on this road.  Or for example I mentioned last week in my introductory speech that we would like to look a little bit more into issues like micro-finance where it is an issue where Luxembourg also on a national level is quite active , and to see how we could bring it even more int some development programmes, try to do some concrete work there.

Kostova: Since you are only the second woman to preside over the council and maybe the youngest person to preside over it I want to ask you how does it feel to be a sort of trailblazer for women?

Lucas: I must say I was a little astonished also when I realized that there had only been the Ambassador of Finland until now, who had the honor of chairing ECOSOC. It is an important issue and I must say that I am very happy about it. I am also actually the first Luxembourg female Permanent Representative to the United Nations and that is something I am very happy about, to bring these issues forward and try to bring this sensibility into the Council's work and I am looking forward also to next year, when the theme actually will be gender equality and we will try to see how we could eventually even already this year work in this direction to also further these kinds of issues.

PRES: Sylvie Lucas, president of the UN Economic and Social Council for 2009.

Producer: Bissera Kostova
Duration: 4'02"