Challenges to the international community’s human rights mainstay were debated today as the General Assembly took up the reports of the Human Rights Council’s sessions this year. Hearing from just over two dozen speakers expressing fellow feeling with citizens of Paris, Beirut and Baghdad in the wake of devastating terrorist attacks in those cities, delegates discussed the way forward for advancing human rights around the world for every individual.
Prior to approving without a vote the request for Observer status in the General Assembly for the Union for the Mediterranean, the Sixth Committee (Legal) today heard oral reports of its three working groups, noting once again that delegations had been unable to conclude a draft comprehensive convention on measures to eliminate international terrorism, a situation the Chair lamented.
The General Assembly today adopted two resolutions submitted by its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) and appointed members to three of its subsidiary bodies.
The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) approved three resolutions today, one of them reaffirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and the population of occupied Syrian Golan over their land, water and energy resources.
A draft resolution that would see the General Assembly address the global refugee crisis and the role of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was among four texts approved today without a vote by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural).
Sounding a united call for future reports of the Security Council to the General Assembly to be more analytical and less descriptive, a score of non-Council Member States today addressed specific conflict situations, as well as cross-cutting issues affecting cooperation between the Council and other organs of the United Nations.
Unanimously approving a draft resolution on special political missions today, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) also concluded its general debate on Israel’s practices in occupied Arab territories, with delegations condemning its blockade of the Gaza Strip, violence by settlers and other human rights violations.
Disturbing evidence of continued human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories further underscored the need for Israel to end its long-standing occupation, speakers in the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) stressed today, as that body opened its annual debate on that country’s illegal practices in occupied lands.
After concluding deliberations on the third and final cluster of topics in the report of the International Law Commission, the Sixth Committee (Legal) today approved without a vote two draft resolutions, the first on the report of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the second on the United Nations Programme of Assistance in the Teaching, Study, Dissemination and Wider Appreciation of International Law.
Domestic resource mobilization and taxation were crucial to achieving sustainable development, several panellists stressed today at a joint meeting of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) and the Economic and Social Council.
