Sixty-first General Assembly

General Committee

3^rd Meeting (PM)

GENERAL COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS INCLUSION OF TWO MORE ITEMS FOR CONSIDERATION

BY GENERAL ASSEMBLY AT CURRENT SESSION

 

The General Committee today recommended the inclusion of two additional items on the General Assembly’s agenda for the current session -- one on the commemoration next year of the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the other on the extension of the terms of ad litem judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The consensus decision of the General Committee was to recommend to the Assembly the inclusion of both items under the category of organizational, administrative and other matters.  Their addition would bring to 152 the total number of agenda items so far to be considered in the current session.  It would also recommend that the two new items would be considered directly in the plenary.

The request to include the commemoration came from Saint Lucia, on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) (document A/61/233).  Introducing it today on the Community’s behalf, the representative of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines said that United Nations recognition of the date would present an opportunity for the world to acknowledge that slavery was genocide.  It would also honour the memory of the millions who had died as a result of the practice being carried on for 500 years.

Inclusion of the item on the United Nations agenda would stir the conscience of the international community, Jamaica’s representative said.  It would also be recognition that the slave trade and more recent genocides, including the Holocaust and Kosovo, must be matters of concern for the international community.

Numerous speakers endorsed the inclusion of the item on the Assembly’s agenda, noting that it was one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed in history.  They called for strong support and consensus, insisting that the United Nations grant appropriate weight to the gravity of the issue.

Chile’s representative said few items on the Assembly’s agenda were as timely and important, adding that the anniversary was an opportunity for the United Nations to “never forget and never overlook” such crimes.  Indonesia’s representative said that the commemoration would be a reminder to the Organization about the need to prevent such practices, while Cameroon’s delegate said the event would “cleanse human conscience” to ensure that history would not be repeated.

Recalling the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, the speaker from Zimbabwe said that commemorating the abolition of slavery could give the Durban outcome some impetus.  Similarly, Haiti’s representative said he was concerned the item came rather “late in the day”, and that it should have been considered earlier since countries continued to suffer the consequences.

Saying his country had been a centre for the practice, Benin’s speaker said the nation had begun repairing the resulting damage with the United States in 1992.  The United Kingdom’s representative said he looked forward to working with the sponsors of the agenda item for a consensus outcome when it came up for debate.

Also speaking in support of CARICOM’s proposal were the representatives of Philippines, Nigeria, Uganda, China, Guinea, Libya, Algeria, Bhutan and Kuwait.

A request of the Secretary-General was the basis for the Committee’s decision to include the item on extension of the terms of ad litem judges for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (document A/61/234).

Finally, this afternoon, General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain) appealed to Member States to continue striving to reach a compromise solution on the allocation of the report of the Human Rights Council (document A/61/53).  She urged that a decision be reached by the end of the week.

The General Committee will meet again at a time to be announced.

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For information media • not an official record