General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today approved its work programme for the seventy-ninth session and set out guidelines for its completion within the allotted time frame.

As the Sixth Committee (Legal) began its debate on measures to eliminate international terrorism at the first meeting of its seventy-ninth session today, speakers grappled with how to effectively marshal national and regional efforts and engage international law to address this phenomenon in a world that looks far different than the one they confronted one year ago.

Ministers and delegates emphasized the need for a just global order, equitable resource distribution and global financial reform, while decrying the ongoing unilateral actions that undermine the dignity and development of poorer nations as they concluded the annual high-level general debate.

World leaders today stressed the need for a new equitable global order to reflect the realities of a polarized world during the fifth day of the General Assembly’s annual high-level debate and called for reduced dominance by Western countries.

As the General Assembly’s annual high-level general debate continued into its fourth day, the leaders of many small island developing States took the podium to repeat a warning they have been sounding for decades — that the international community must urgently act to support nations suffering the consequences of a crisis they did not create and cannot weather alone.

Acknowledging that antimicrobial resistance is an urgent threat to global human and animal health, food security, the environment and development, Member States approved a political declaration on the menace this morning.

Development and threats of use of nuclear weapons are reaching a high point that must be reversed for the good of future generations, speakers said today during the General Assembly’s annual high-level commemoration of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

World leaders addressed multiple flashpoints and volatile crises in the Middle East and elsewhere during the third day of the General Assembly’s annual high-level general debate, with Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, urging the international community to hold Israel to account for carrying out a “full-scale war of genocide” and stressing that the Palestinian people “will not allow a single centimetre of Gaza to be taken”.

Acknowledging the complex global problems facing beleaguered multilateral institutions, African leaders called today for not just a permanent seat at the Security Council table, but for an elevated presence in international affairs that reflects the continent’s potential, power and resources.

The representatives of small island developing States and low-lying countries today urged immediate international action to combat sea-level rise — a global crisis threatening the lives and livelihoods of 1 billion people worldwide — during the General Assembly’s inaugural high-level meeting on the issue.