CIBJO is a currently preparing a “groundbreaking” Corporate Social Responsibility educational programme for the jewellery sector, which will be offered worldwide and promote the industry’s involvement in sustainable development, CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri has told a meeting in Geneva of world leaders. They were attending the High Level Segment of the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council.
The four-day High Level Segment opened ECOSOC’s 2013 Substantive Session, which began on July 1 and will close July 26. ECOSOC deals with the world’s economic, social and environmental challenges, and has responsibility for some 70 percent of the human and financial resources of the entire UN system. One of its key functions is to promote the Millennium Development Goals, which were set by the United Nations in 2000, and created specific targets for poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, HIV/AIDS and malaria reduction, as well as a global partnership for development. These are meant to be met by 2015.
CIBJO, which has been the jewellery industry’s sole representative in the body since 2006, was among only 78 non-government organisations to be invited to address the High Level Segment, from the 3,735 NGO’s that are recognized by ECOSOC. The meeting was opened by Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General; Vuk Jeremić, President of the UN General Assembly; and Néstor Osorio, President of ECOSOC.
In his statement to the High Level Segment, Dr. Cavalieri said that CIBJO shares a common vision with ECOSOC. “It seeks to increase innovative productivity, encourages the use of cutting-edge mining and jewellery processing technologies, and industrialization and downstream beneficiation in developing economies, leading to economic growth and the creation of decent jobs in the international jewellery industry. This will, in turn, contribute to eradicating poverty in regions in which we are particularly active, and specifically Africa,” he stated.
In developing the CSR educational programme, Dr. Cavalieri said in his presentation, CIBJO is joining forces with Fiera di Vicenza, one of the leading trade fair organisers in the international jewellery industry. “Through Fiera di Vicenza’s extensive international network, we aim to educate members of the industry about CSR, and specifically the obligations of businesses to promote sustainable development,” he stated. Contact has been made with one of Italy’s leading business schools concerning the preparation of courses and educational materials, he said.
“The proposed CIBJO-Fiera di Vicenza programme will be presented at the UN headquarters in the fall,” Dr. Cavalieri stated. “The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations will review this educational programme in the hopes of mainstreaming ethical business practices into many cultures.”
This year’s High Level Segment focussed on science, technology and innovation as agents for economic and social development. “The steadily increasing pace of technological innovation makes ours an era of a long profound change,” stated ECOSOC President Osorio, in his address to the session. “So many fields of human endeavour – medicine, energy, agriculture – have made significant, even drastic, improvements in just a few generations.”
Dr. Cavalieri made special mention of technological innovation in the jewellery industry in his address to the meeting, noting that it can serve as catalyst to narrow the gaps between emerging centres and established ones. Technology, he said, “enable the people in new centres to get the same value and with the same profitability, and also encourage companies in the developed centres to invest in developing centres.”
Photo Caption (ABOVE): CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri addressing the United Nation’s ECOSOC High Level Segment in Geneva.
Photo Caption (BELOW): CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri (right), joined by Néstor Osorio (centre), president of ECOSOC, and Lord Daniel Brennan QC, Chair of Britain’s All Party Parliamentary Group for Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Co-chair of the Washington think tank Global Financial Integrity, and a Member of the Advisory Board of the Convention of Independent Financial Advisors (CIFA), which like CIBJO has consultative status in ECOSOC.