FORUM: General Assembly First Committee

FORUM: General Assembly First Committee

QUESTION OF: Measures to combat global economic inequality due to race and gender

SUBMITTED BY: Cuba

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

Defining global economic inequality as the discrepancy amongst individuals and societies in income, access to finance, business and trading, whereby groups become underprivileged and disadvantaged in comparison to others,

Bearing in mind the United Nations Charter Article 2 section 1, which recognizes the equal sovereignty of all Member States,

Recalling A/RES/58/146, which focuses on the empowerment of women, including access to education and training, control over resources, and participation in decision-making,

Keeping in mind that women, and ethnic minorities are often unfairly represented and discriminated against in education and in the labor market,

Emphasizing that race or gender should never be a factor that affects or determines economic opportunity,

Believing that the archetype of sexism and racism must be eradicated before the implementation of measures to solve global economic inequality,

Stressing that the situation must be alleviated at an incremental and steady pace, especially by spreading awareness, without forcible intervention by foreign nations, who may impose unrealistic and illogical standards according to their beliefs,

1.  Urges cooperation amongst Governmental Organizations (GOs), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and United Nations Organizations (UNOs) such as UN Women, to encourage women empowerment by:

a)  raising awareness of woman empowerment and equality

b)  getting assistance from Say Yes to Education, an NGO that educates young children, to teach about gender equality in ways such as but not limited to:

i.  creating Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that encourages women empowerment in society

ii.  creating advertisements that take events from history where it proves that women are capable of doing the work that men were able to do

c)  discouraging or censoring extremist and racist opinion from being published or made available on mass media

d)  calling upon employers’ and workers’ organizations to promote:

i.  the negotiation and adoption of employment equity plans

ii.  the evaluation of gender equality policies, workplace practices and programmes to detect and eliminate gender and racial discrimination;

2.  Suggests the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to organize a conference on empowering marginalized communities that discusses the following issues:

a)  increased opportunities for female entrepreneurs

b)  cultivating access to financial services towards marginalized groups with the help banks, financial institutions, and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) by appealing to private sector, non-governmental organizations, and member states to provide funding for the formation of technical and trade schools in higher institutions, especially in rural and remote communities by:

c)  approving nations to start, continue and open up the trade for Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs);

3.  Suggests member nations to encourage micro-credits endorsed by the UN Capital Development Fund towards women and discriminated groups in order to:

a)  increase efficiency by the standardization of procedures involved for the productive use of available funding

b)  encourage the development of a subsidized interest rate for women specific entrepreneurial initiatives

c)  implement an installment system so that the debt could be paid over time in programs

d)  provide extensions of debt payments if debt is not paid back accordingly, only under the circumstances that such an extension is approved by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)

e)  regulate transparency by submitting fiscal reports quarterly to donors;

f)  suggests a focus on providing these standardized procedures and increased availability of micro credits to women and minorities as a priority

g)  encourages the use of NGOs, such as Kiva International, to educate the women and minorities interested in receiving micro credits on how to properly manage the funds they will be provided through mandatory seminars before receiving the funding;

4.  Requests member nations to change governmental policies to enhance and alleviate global economic inequality through means such as but not limited to:

a)  prohibiting extra taxes that discourage people to start their own company, such as but not limited to:

i.  additional business taxes paid the government without consideration of the businesses conditions

ii.  additional federal tax on start-up businesses;

5.  Requesting World Bank to create a required checkup system that makes a report of nation’s economic inequality in ways such as but not limited to:

a)  ranking with the usage of the GINI Coefficient

b)  measuring the growth of all industries in each country to determine areas that can provide more equal economic opportunity

c)  indicating the level of entrepreneurship led by women and minorities;

6.  Calls upon the formation of NGO named “Economic Growth Committee (EGC), under the guidance of organizations such as Transparency International and the International Monetary Fund to:

a)  prevent or change government policies that initially threaten to support the income inequality, pay inequality, or wealth inequality, and recommending countries to have a minimum wage determined

b)  promote donation funds from organizations such as the World Food Programme to give away food as an act of charity from the More Economically Developed Countries (MEDCs)

c)  ensure that the organization stated above do not violate national sovereignty for its goals but recommend possible solutions to create a more economically equal nation that promotes transparency

d)  monitor that nations are properly enforcing laws and doing everything in the nation’s power to make sure that the judicial and executive branches are ensuring that gender and race inequalities are not being violated;

7.  Suggests that all members of the UN further emphasize the need to eliminate economic inequality due to race by:

a)  calling upon all governments to tackle the issue by:

i.  ensuring the regional or district government, in all of developed and developing countries, to reduce the growing racial economic gap by solving the lack of measuring and collecting cohesive data

ii.  suggesting that governments can deal with the racial inequality by improving political equality between the majority and minority races,

b)  requesting more complete and comprehensive education systems to the minority groups who are enduring the biased race discrimination by:

i.  removing the racial bias or misleading conceptions for teaching faculty in each country, requesting them to show respect to every student and behave moderately

ii.  recommending to increase the number of lectures or school activities about race equality issues that gives students to have deeper understanding;

8.  Encourages national governments to take initiatives for women and marginalized racial groups to get access to education, through ways such as but not limited to:

a)  provision of scholarships to students who live in poverty and in developing countries

b)  the creation of a Center of Talented Youth program in developing countries to advocate for cultural perspectives

c)  provision of scholarships to students thinking of reaching jobs that enhances the country’s status such as Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) entrepreneurship

d)  educational programs about gender equality such as PSAs, advertisements and infographics, that are easily accessible

e)  implementing Universal Basic Literacy Courses (BLC) that aims to provide functional and skill-based literacy training that will further help the marginalized citizens to have the ability to read and write.