Switzerland’s representative today urged the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) to stay the course on the United Nations’ nearly decade-long project to renovate its historic Geneva headquarters — a call that comes as those offices, along with UN Headquarters in New York, face the prospect of relocating staff to less expensive duty stations.
Member States clashed over how to manage civil society participation in the upcoming high-level meeting on the thirtieth anniversary of the World Programme of Action for Youth, as the General Assembly convened today to take action on a range of matters.
As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) continues its second resumed session today, delegates will consider cross-cutting issues under their agenda item “administrative and budgetary aspects of financing UN peacekeeping operations”.
A severe cash shortfall is forcing the United Nations to slash spending and freeze hiring, jeopardizing its ability to deliver on mandated programmes and exposing the Organization to growing reputational risk, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) heard today, as Member States explored potential solutions to the liquidity crisis.
“We are doing this work because States are not,” civil society activists told the United Nations today at a special consultation on their initiatives to ensure accountability for Israel’s actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“Palestinians are racialized as a security threat, because they — we — refuse to disappear,” the Palestinian Rights Committee heard today from a scholar who spoke at a special event remembering the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Nakba.
As of 30 April, the United Nations’ regular budget collections have trailed estimates and fallen significantly below last year’s levels, the Organization’s top finance official reported to the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today, urging Member States to expedite their payments and communicate their payment plans promptly.
Approving two resolutions regarding the work of the Department of Global Communications as well as on ensuring equity in access to information, the United Nations Committee on Information concluded its forty-seventh session today.
Marking the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, speakers in the General Assembly today paid solemn tribute to the millions who gave their lives in defense of “freedoms too often taken for granted” and underscored the urgent need to recommit to multilateralism, as conflicts continue to rage from the Middle East to Ukraine.
As peacekeeping missions continue to evolve in complexity and size and mandates, the Fifth Committee began its consideration of the budget for the support account for those operations during the upcoming fiscal cycle and listened to the findings of a comprehensive review of that account.
