General Assembly: No name

Equal access to education — with accommodating teachers, understanding students and a supportive administration — coupled with respect for the right of disabled persons to choose where and with whom they lived were vital elements for realizing the full spectrum of human rights, the third Conference of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was told today, in two round table discussions concerning those issues.

The third Conference of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities opened today amid calls to equally include disabled persons in community life, health and education systems, and to effectively fill planning and execution gaps in Government strategies that often fell short of addressing their needs, especially in times of conflict or natural disaster.

This statement was issued today by the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on the resumption of permanent status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians:

With thousands of people forced into labour, servitude or the sex trade each year, the General Assembly formally launched the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons today, one month after its adoption as a consensus resolution outlining the terms of the Plan.

The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) this afternoon moved towards completing its bureau for the General Assembly’s sixty-fifth session by electing a new Chair and Vice-Chair.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) met this morning to elect its Chair and other officers for the General Assembly’s sixty-fifth session.

The General Assembly today elected Joan Clos ( Spain) as Executive Director of United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) to a four-year term of office, beginning on 18 October 2010 and ending on 17 October 2014.

The Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations informed the Palestinian Rights Committee this morning that the Middle East Quartet had just minutes earlier released a statement inviting the Israeli and Palestinian sides to begin direct negotiations in Washington, D.C., on 2 September, aiming towards an agreement in one year.

The General Assembly today concluded its two-day discussion on providing urgent humanitarian assistance to flood-stricken Pakistan, with some 49 speakers taking the floor to urge drastically scaling up efforts to meet the United Nations’ $460 million flash appeal, coordinate aid distribution with the Pakistani authorities, and — from neighbouring countries that had experienced similar natural disasters — heed what was indeed a moral obligation to quickly address the unfolding human tragedy.

With the international community only now beginning to comprehend the true scope of the devastation in flood-ravaged Pakistan, the United Nations General Assembly today expressed full solidarity with the Pakistani people, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a massive scaling up of aid and warned that fallout from three weeks of flooding that had affected 15 million to 20 million people was likely to last for years.