The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) approved a resolution today on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as heard the introduction of seven texts on issues ranging from combating the glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism, to realizing the right to food.
While there were still many challenges to be addressed, international tribunals set up in the wake of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had left behind a historic legacy of bringing to justice perpetrators of atrocity crimes, the General Assembly heard this morning.
Concluding its work for the main part of the General Assembly’s seventy-first session, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) approved 10 draft resolutions and two draft decisions today, on such issues as Israeli practices, to the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), to the question of Gibraltar.
The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) met this afternoon to introduce seven draft resolutions, including on tackling the human rights situations in Syria and Iran, as well as on measures to eliminate female genital mutilation.
The General Assembly would demand that Israel stop exploiting, damaging, depleting or endangering natural resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan, according to one of three draft resolutions approved by the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today.
At a United Nations pledging conference today, 24 countries committed to provide approximately $1.09 billion towards development activities. The amount represented an increase of more than of fourteen-fold over those commitments made in 2015.
Following its debate on the revitalization of the work of the General Assembly, the Sixth Committee (Legal) today approved without a vote a request for Observer status and six draft resolutions related to its work during the seventy-first session.
After two decades of stalled action on Security Council reform, it was high time to move the process forward, the General Assembly heard today, with many speakers calling for an updated Council that would better reflect the sweeping global changes that had occurred since the founding of the United Nations in 1946.
The human rights situation was not getting better, but worse, the President of the Human Rights Council told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) as delegates discussed ways to counter increasing divisions within that body over the mandates under its purview.
While some delegates spotlighted the link between ensuring fundamental freedoms and achieving sustainable development, several others expressed concern that the Human Rights Council was overstepping its mandate, the General Assembly heard today, as it considered that body’s annual report.
