General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The General Assembly needed to be revitalized and empowered in order to meet the current global challenges and fulfil its central role, as envisaged by the United Nations Charter, General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser told that body today. More than ever, world events necessitated a strong and responsive General Assembly and it should not be restricted to being a venue for deliberation, he said.

States Parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination this morning elected by secret ballot nine members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to replace those whose four-year terms were set to expire on 19 January 2012.

Stressing that popular uprisings across the Middle East were demanding greater inclusiveness and democracy, General Assembly delegates called today for peace and justice — as well as “re-energized” efforts to resolve old regional conflicts — to reign across the region, as it adopted six related resolutions. By six recorded votes, the Assembly adopted resolutions on both the “Question of Palestine” and on the wider “Situation in the Middle East”.

The need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had taken on greater urgency with the historic transformations taking place across the region, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Touting the United Nations ambitious projects in information and communications technology development and enterprise resource planning as the “engine and enabler” of the Organization’s reform and strengthening, the Deputy Secretary-General urged delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today to supply the necessary funds to implement them.

“A historic moment is before Member States to act, to uphold their legal obligations and the United Nations Charter,” declared the Permanent Observer of Palestine today, as he challenged the General Assembly to rectify the injustice that had uprooted millions of Palestinians from their homeland and had led to nearly 65 years of Israeli occupation.

Strongly condemning the continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities, the General Assembly would call for Syria to immediately put an end to all human rights violations, to protect their population and to fully comply with their obligations under international human rights law by a text approved by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, at the conclusion of its current session.

The General Assembly would urge States and international organizations to protect coral reefs and related ecosystems while implementing integrated and comprehensive approaches to their management, according to one of 12 texts approved without a vote in the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today.

A weeks-long stalemate to elect one member of the International Court of Justice continued today as, after four votes — bringing the total number of voting rounds in the General Assembly to 11 — no candidate received the absolute majority of votes in both the Assembly and the Security Council that was required to clinch the final seat on the World Court.

The Third Committee today approved three resolutions that would have the General Assembly address human rights situations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Myanmar and Iran, even as delegations debated the legitimacy of country‑specific resolutions.