General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The General Assembly this morning elected Vuk Jeremić, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, as President of its sixty-seventh session, voting by secret ballot for the first time in more than 20 years.

In the wake of what United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described as yet another “shocking and sickening” massacre of civilians in Syria, senior United Nations and Arab League officials today joined forces “at a grave and grievous hour” to rally international support for envoy Kofi Annan’s faltering peace plan and press the Syrian Government and opposition groups to immediately end the violence.

Adopting today an initial assessment of the first review of a joint strategy between the Government of Guinea and the Peacebuilding Commission to promote national reconciliation, reform the security sector, and provide job opportunities for women and young people, the Peacebuilding Commission agreed that the country’s political transition must culminate in the holding of free, transparent and politically and technically credible legislative elections.

With General Assembly delegations gathered to seek common ground on the concept of human security and its possible application in the work of the United Nations, senior officials called for comprehensive, people-centred strategies to tackle current and emerging threats, so millions of people struggling each day with a sense of profound insecurity could “build towards a future that is more peaceful and prosperous for all”.

PARIS, 1 June — Civil society organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel must play a more active role to bring about a just, stable peace in the region, speakers said today during the day-long United Nations Meeting of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, which took place in Paris. Entitled “Civil society action towards ending the occupation: harnessing the power of youth and women”, the event featured four workshops.

QUITO, ECUADOR, 1 June — As the three-day Pacific Regional Seminar on the Implementation of the Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism drew to a close today, the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, Diego Morejón-Pazmiño of Ecuador, said participants had had the opportunity to bring to light the challenges still confronting the Non-Self-Governing Territories in the process of decolonization.

QUITO, ECUADOR, 31 May — On its second day, the Regional Seminar on the Implementation of the Third International Decade for Eradication of Colonialism discussed the challenges and opportunities in the decolonization process of the Non-Self-Governing Territories.

PARIS, 31 May — The need to change the Israeli mindset towards Palestinians, dismantle Israeli settlements, apply rights-based diplomacy to end the conflict, and better coordinate civil society and United Nations efforts on the ground took centre stage as the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine concluded this afternoon in Paris.

PARIS, 31 May — The role of information technology in Palestinian social cohesion and state-building, strategies to bolster education and the need to hold Israel to account for human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territory were examined this morning as the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine continued in Paris.

QUITO, ECUADOR, 30 May — In a message to the Pacific Regional Seminar on the Implementation of the Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon encouraged participants to promote genuine communication at all levels, formal and informal, in which interlocutors are genuinely listened to and heard, on a case-by-case-basis.