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Ghana was elected President for the newly composed Bureau of Ministers of Social Development for ECOWAS countries at the just ended forum in Accra. The Bureau, headed by Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, had Dr Anta Sarr, Minister of Gender, Women and Children from Senegal as the Vice President while the Liberian Minister of Gender and Development, Ms Julia Duncan-Cassell was elected the Rapporteur. La Cote d�Ivoire�s �Ministre Solidarite, Famille, Femme, Enfant�, Anna Desiree Ouloto and Lamine Tavares, Executive Director for Social Solidarity from Cape Verde were elected Vice Rapporteurs respectively. They would serve until the fourth forum, which would be held in Durban, South Africa in September 2015. The two-day forum was under the auspices of the Ghana government in collaboration with UNESCO�s Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme to discuss issues concerning challenges and impact of environmental change on social inclusion and vulnerability and how to improve linkage between research and policy on the subject. Participants were drawn from 11 member countries including ECOWAS Commission, United Nations, Bureau of the MOST Inter-governmental Council, the West African Institute, regional research institutions and social sciences networks in Africa. Nana Oye Lithur expressed appreciation to members for the confidence reposed in Ghana to chair the Bureau and reiterated the commitment to collaborate with other member countries to achieve the goals of the forum. She commended participants for their active participation, which she said was a clear resolve to address the issues of environmental change on social inclusion and vulnerability. She announced that the forum had agreed to institutionalise the meeting as a sustainable platform to promote sub-regional objectives with regards to inclusive and sustainable social development. The forum also asked UNESCO to maintain and enhance its support consistently, to ensure that the series of UNESCO MOST Ministerial Forums in Charge of Social Development for the ECOWAS countries be held as far as possible on a biennial basis. It also asked UNESCO and ECOWAS to cooperate closely to provide the forum with solid secretariat support, including proposing terms of reference for the functioning of the Bureau and favouring access on an on-going basis to relevant research results in the social and human sciences. The forum also undertake to act through their national science policies, with due regard to national needs assessment, to strengthen social and human science research oriented towards analysis of social transformations, among others.