General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The Sixth Committee on Legal Affairs began its debate on crimes against humanity Wednesday, 9 October, in the afternoon, half a day ahead of the announced programme of work.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today considered the Secretary-General’s appeal for $711.3 million for three dozen special political missions for 2025 as several delegations again pushed for the creation of a special financing mechanism to sustain them.

With only 17 per cent of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets on track, the United Nations system and Member States must enhance and coordinate efforts to rescue them, speakers told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today as it took up the Secretary-General’s reports on the state of development.

It is one of the most perilous times in world history — no less decisive than in 1945 when the UN was founded, the representative of Grenada told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today.

The General Assembly today elected 18 members to the Human Rights Council for the 2025-2027 term, adopted a resolution on matters regarding the assessment scale for distributing the costs of the United Nations' expenses and concluded its debate on last month’s high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance.

The situation in Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa, took centre stage today in the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) as petitioners from both sides shared conflicting accounts of the human rights situation in the Territory.

The global backlash against women’s and girls’ rights has reached extreme proportions in certain countries, threatening to undo decades of progress, experts told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, as delegates underlined the need to transform structures of inequality and discrimination.

General Assembly President Philémon Yang (Cameroon) urged Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) delegates today to adopt a realistic, implementable budget for 2025 by year’s end, ideally well before the set deadline, and to plead with their respective capitals to pay their assessed contributions in full, on time and without conditions.

Highlighting persistent roadblocks and hindrances to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), speakers stressed the need to mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change, build economic resilience, boost financing and forgive crippling debt, as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) continued its general debate today.

The world is at a “delicate crossroads” with crises and conflicts raging in many regions,” General Assembly President Philémon Yang told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) during its wide-ranging debate, adding that the challenges before delegations is “immense”.