In an emergency meeting, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution deploring the use of excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and particularly the Gaza Strip.
The General Assembly today elected 18 members of the Economic and Social Council to serve three-year terms beginning 1 January 2019. Those elected were Angola, Armenia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mali, Netherlands, Pakistan, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and the United States. The 18 outgoing members were Afghanistan, Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czechia, Guyana, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon, Nigeria, Peru, Republic of Moldova, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, United States and Viet Nam.
Having made considerable progress in reducing the rates of new HIV infections and expanding the availability of antiretroviral drugs, the global community must resist the temptation to “rest on its laurels” and instead redouble efforts to completely eradicate the virus, the General Assembly heard today, as delegates outlined national progress towards meeting testing and treatment benchmarks to that end.
Opening the substantive portion of its 2018 session today, the Special Committee on Decolonization took up the long‑standing questions of Gibraltar and Western Sahara, while also approving several annual resolutions relating to the dissemination of information about its work and the dispatching of visiting missions to the world’s 17 remaining Non‑Self‑Governing Territories.
In a single round of voting today, the General Assembly elected Belgium, Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa as non-permanent members of the Security Council for two-year terms spanning 2019-2020.
An effective accountability system was critical to the successful management of the United Nations Secretariat, delegates told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today, as they called for continued refinement of policies and practices regardless of decisions taken on overall reform of the Organization’s executive branch.
The General Assembly elected María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (Ecuador) today as President of its seventy-third session — making her only the fourth woman to helm the 193-member organ in its more than seven-decades-long history — while also electing 21 Vice-Presidents by acclamation.
Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today advocated streamlining processes and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy to best equip the United Nations to deliver on its mandates as the Secretary‑General’s Chef de Cabinet laid out his proposal to decentralize the management structures at Headquarters.
To a burst of applause, the General Assembly adopted today a landmark consensus resolution on repositioning the United Nations development system, hailed by Secretary‑General António Guterres as ushering in the most ambitious and comprehensive transformation of those activities in decades.
Several gaps in the revised budget proposal for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals could negatively impact mandate delivery, delegates warned today, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) examined the Mechanism’s financing requirements for the next two years.
