General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

Welcoming the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian direct negotiations and stressing that the current diplomatic initiative may represent “the final window of opportunity to achieve a negotiated two-State solution”, the Palestinian Rights Committee adopted its annual report this morning and heard a briefing on the most recent developments in the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) met today for a brief organizational meeting to adopt its agenda and work programme for the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly.

A range of viewpoints from delegates greeted the Chair of the Committee on Contributions today, as he presented the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) with a review of the methodology for assessing Member States’ contributions to the United Nations expenses.

Lamenting the deaths of more the 100 men, women and children shipwrecked in Lampedusa and the tireless search for more than 100 other migrants still missing, Italy’s representative said today that it was now up to the international community to address migration issues.

In a brief organizational meeting today, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) approved its work programme for the new session, which contains more than a dozen topics for consideration, including questions relating to peacekeeping, outer space, the effects of atomic radiation and the granting of independence to Non-Self-Governing Territories and peoples.

As they adopted their programme of work for the sixty-eighth session today, delegates of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) stressed the need to work together to approve the Organization’s 2014-2015 budget, along with the final performance report of the current two-year budget cycle, by their mid-December deadline.

Strengthening the connection between people seeking livelihoods abroad and the post-2015 development agenda was crucial to origin and destination countries and to migrants themselves, delegates heard today, after unanimously adopting the Declaration of the General Assembly’s High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development.

The world should not ease the pressure on Iran’s nuclear programme as that country positioned itself to “race across the red line” before the international community could prevent it from building nuclear bombs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said today as the General Assembly concluded its week-long general debate.

As the General Assembly entered week two of its annual debate, Canada’s Minister for Foreign Affairs said he rejected the “pernicious notion” that human dignity could be “sliced up, compartmentalized or compromised”, since it was impossible, in a pluralistic society, to protect some human rights and freedoms while infringing others.

For small island developing States, the devastating impacts of climate change struck at the very heart of their survival, and without renewed political efforts to mitigate their reach, those nations would continue to suffer dramatic setbacks in their economic and social well-being, several world leaders warned today, as the General Assembly moved into the fifth day of its annual debate.