General Assembly: No name

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ briefing to the General Assembly meeting on the priorities of the Organization for 2024, in New York today:

The Peacebuilding Commission plays a vital role in connecting “the dots” between the United Nations work streams on peace and development, its new Chair said today, as he laid out the 31-member body’s priorities for 2024.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the opening of the 2024 session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in New York today:

Donor countries that have suspended funding to the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees — following allegations of staff involvement in the 7 October attacks against Israel — should reverse their decisions, speakers told the Palestinian Rights Committee today, as they stressed that such cuts will penalize millions of aid recipients, rather than individuals implicated in the case.

The following statement was issued today by the Bureau of the General Assembly’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People:

The General Assembly decided today to convene a one-day high-level plenary meeting in late September to address the existential threats posed by sea-level rise.

Speakers in the General Assembly today examined the recent use of veto by the United States against an amendment to Security Council resolution 2720 (2023) on Gaza that would have called for “an urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access” and for “urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.

The international community “seems incapable of coming together” to respond to intensifying crises, pushing the multilateral system into dysfunction and deadlock in a more fragmented world, the United Nations Secretary-General warned this September at the annual high-level General Assembly debate.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today wrapped up the main part of its seventy-eighth session by sending the General Assembly a 2024 budget of $3.59 billion, about $3 million more than the $3.3 billion budget laid out by the Secretary-General in October.

Concluding the main part of its seventy-eighth session, the General Assembly today adopted 28 resolutions and 1 decision, including a $3.59 billion budget for 2024, the establishment of a financing mechanism for the Peacebuilding Fund and the strengthening of a Secretariat office meant to curb the presence of racism in the Organization.