The United Nations Wednesday kicked off a high-level meeting to discuss the current global financial and economic crisis and its impact on development.

The three-day high-level meeting came as the first conference in the history of the United Nations to discuss the issue of the international financial and economic crisis. The meeting was held after the April summit of the Group of 20 (G20) largest economies in the world and before the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations and the G20 conference in Pittesburgh, the United States, in September.

The United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development is held at the UN headquarters in New York, the US, June 24, 2009. The United Nations kicked off a three-day high-level meeting on Wednesday to assess the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression. [Gu Xinrong/Xinhua]

As high-level delegates from around the globe gathered at the UN Headquarters in New York to discuss how to address the economic meltdown while taking the interests of all nations into account, top United Nations officials issued urgent calls for action to ease the burden on the world's poorest.

"At this critical moment, we must all join our efforts to prevent the global crisis, with its myriad faces, from turning into a social, environmental and humanitarian tragedy," General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto said at the start of the high-level meeting, officially known as the Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development.

Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, President of the 63rd Session of the UN General Assembly, delivers remarks during the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development at the UN headquarters in New York, the US, June 24, 2009. The current financial and economic crisis, which has spread all over the world and negatively affected all countries, also provides an opportunity for the world to locate the problems and hammer out strategies for sustainable development, Brockmann said here on Wednesday. [Shen Hong/Xinhua]

He called for a solution to the current turmoil that will not leave "the vast majority of humanity to their fate," exhorting the representatives from nearly 150 Member States expected to address the three-day gathering to "take decisions that affect us all collectively to the greatest extent possible."