17 April 2015: Member States of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) launched a consultative process for the creation of a Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Forum on Sustainable Development, during an extraordinary session of ECLAC’s Committee of the Whole.

The extraordinary meeting, which convened on 16 April 2015, in Santiago, Chile, to discuss the Forum, was agreed to by the Committee of the Whole during its March session in New York, US.

Participants approved a resolution agreeing to open a consultative process aimed at creating a LAC Forum on Sustainable Development. The results of the process will be submitted for approval during ECLAC’s XXXVI session, in May 2016 in Mexico.

ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena said important events during 2015, such as the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD 3) in July, and the UN General Assembly’s approval of the post-2015 development agenda in September, are directly related to the proposed activities of the Forum. She said ECLAC will form a team to organize the consultative process in the coming months.

The Committee of the Whole is a subsidiary body of ECLAC that enables the governments to meet between official Commission sessions. [ECLAC Press Release]