The Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations established in 1945. ECOSOC serves as the central forum within the United Nations system for discussing international economic, social, and environmental issues, coordinating the work of 14 UN specialized agencies, ten functional commissions, and five regional commissions. The council is composed of 54 member states elected by the General Assembly for staggered three year terms, with representation apportioned across regional groups. ECOSOC conducts studies, drafts resolutions and conventions, and issues policy recommendations aimed at raising standards of living, achieving full employment, and advancing social, cultural, and humanitarian progress worldwide.

The modern global economy depends on a small number of maritime chokepoints through which a disproportionate share of world trade must pass. When conflict disrupts one of these corridors, the effects are rarely contained to the region involved. Since late 2023, attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have forced the majority of container traffic that once passed through the Suez Canal, historically around 30 percent of global container trade, to divert around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly ten to fifteen days to Asia-Europe voyages. Freight rates and war-risk insurance premiums climbed sharply as a result, and although attacks eased somewhat following a Gaza ceasefire reached in October 2025, shipping analysts note that traffic through the canal remains well below pre-crisis levels and that renewed disruption remains a real possibility.

That risk was realized in early 2026. A war between Iran and a United States-Israel coalition, which began on 28 February 2026, led to a near total halt in tanker movements through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that normally carries approximately 20 percent of the world's oil and gas trade. Benchmark crude prices surged from roughly 70 to more than 90 dollars a barrel within weeks, prompting IEA member countries to release emergency reserves and triggering fuel shortages, panic buying, and price spikes for fertilizer and liquefied natural gas in countries that depend on Gulf energy exports. A ceasefire and subsequent US-Iran agreement in June 2026 allowed traffic through the strait to resume and prices to ease, but analysts continue to describe the situation as fragile, particularly given the Houthi movement's warnings that it could resume Red Sea attacks if regional tensions escalate again.

These episodes have renewed a broader debate about globalization itself. Decades of efficiency driven, just-in-time supply chains were built on the assumption that transit routes would remain open and predictable. Economists now describe a shift toward geoeconomic fragmentation, in which countries increasingly favor resilience over efficiency through strategies like regional diversification, reshoring, and friend-shoring. While wealthier economies may be able to absorb the costs of rerouting and stockpiling, developing countries that rely on imported fuel, food, and fertilizer, or on export-led growth, are often hit hardest by conflict driven price shocks, with limited capacity to buffer their populations from the consequences.

The tension at the heart of this agenda item is between short-term crisis response and long-term structural reform. Sustainable solutions cannot rely solely on emergency reserves or ad hoc naval escorts; they require the international community to consider how trade routes, energy markets, and supply chains can be made more resilient to conflict without abandoning the economic gains that global interdependence has produced.

1. How can the international community reduce the vulnerability of global supply chains to disruptions at critical maritime chokepoints such as the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz?

2. What responsibilities do major powers and naval coalitions have to protect civilian shipping during regional conflicts?

3. How should the economic burden of conflict driven spikes in fuel, food, and fertilizer prices be shared between developed and developing economies?

4. To what extent should states pursue regional diversification or friend-shoring of supply chains, and what would this mean for developing economies that depend on export-led growth and open trade?

• Review of Maritime Transport 2025: Staying the course in turbulent waters | UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 

• Suez Canal Authority 

• The Costs of Geoeconomic Fragmentation-Bolhuis-Chen-Kett 

• How the Iran War Ignited a Geoeconomic Firestorm | Council on Foreign Relations

For most of the twentieth century, the dominant demographic concern facing the international community was rapid population growth and its strain on resources, food security, and development. That narrative is shifting. Population growth is still occurring globally, but the growth rate has been slowing for decades, and a growing number of countries are now falling below the replacement fertility rate, generally defined as 2.1 births per woman, the level required for a population to maintain its size from one generation to the next without relying on immigration.

As of 2026, 136 of the 237 countries and territories tracked by the United Nations have fertility rates below replacement level, and a majority of the global population now lives in a country below that threshold. The decline is most pronounced in high income regions. The United States is projected to record a historic low total fertility rate in 2026, and France, long considered an outlier among wealthy nations for its relatively high fertility, recorded more deaths than births in 2025 for the first time since the end of the Second World War. Fertility rates in parts of East Asia and Southern Europe have fallen even further, well under half of replacement level in some cases. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the primary exception, with several countries still recording fertility rates above 5 children per woman, although even these rates have declined significantly since 1950.

The consequences of sustained sub-replacement fertility extend well beyond birth statistics. Aging populations and shrinking working age cohorts place growing strain on pension systems, healthcare infrastructure, and labour markets, while slower long-term economic growth becomes increasingly difficult to avoid. Countries facing these pressures must weigh a range of policy responses, from expanding immigration and raising retirement ages, to family support policies such as childcare subsidies, parental leave, and housing assistance intended to help people achieve the family size they say they want. Meanwhile, countries with fertility still above replacement level face a very different challenge: ensuring that a growing youth population has access to education, healthcare, and employment, a dynamic that can either become a demographic dividend or a source of instability depending on how it is managed.

A central debate in this area concerns why fertility is falling and what, if anything, governments should do about it. Research increasingly points to a growing gap between the number of children people say they want and the number they are able to have, driven by the rising cost of housing and childrearing, unstable or demanding work, limited access to affordable childcare, and the uneven distribution of unpaid domestic labor between partners. This reframes the issue from one of shifting personal preferences to one of feasibility and reproductive autonomy, raising the question of how population policy can support people's actual family goals without infringing on individual choice. ECOSOC's own Commission on Population and Development, established in 1946 as the Population Commission, has long served as the primary UN body responsible for examining these dynamics and advising on policy responses.

1. What policies can effectively help people achieve their desired family size without infringing on reproductive rights and individual autonomy?

2. How should states plan for aging populations and shrinking workforces, particularly regarding pension systems, healthcare, and labor markets?

3. What role should immigration policy play in addressing labor shortages caused by low fertility rates, and what obligations do receiving and sending countries have to one another?

4. How can the international community balance the differing demographic challenges faced by low-fertility and high-fertility countries within a shared policy framework?

• World Population Dashboard 

• Which countries have fertility rates above or below the “replacement level”? | Our World in Data 

• 5 facts about global fertility trends | Pew Research Center