General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

Over the next decade, new technologies, including artificial intelligence, data analytics, robotics, and synthetic biology, would start to improve productivity, the Director of Scanning and Foresight at Policy Horizons Canada told the Second Committee today.

With nearly $45 billion in assets at year-end 2012, the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund was paying out $2 billion a year in benefits to more than 67,000 people around the globe while preparing to meet its obligations to 85,000 beneficiaries by the end of the decade, the Chairman of the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Board told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today.

The expansion of the Security Council with more balanced and equitable representation, especially regarding Africa, had gained broad support among delegates, as the General Assembly concluded its debate on reform of the 15-member body.

Israel supported the humanitarian work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) by approving the vast majority of its requests and providing it unrestricted access to Israeli officials, its representative told the Fourth Committee today, adding, however, that the country “deeply opposes UNRWA’s political agenda”.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) approved three draft resolutions today, including one addressing the needs of women in rural areas and another highlighting the twentieth anniversary of the International Year of the Family to be observed in 2014.

Overhaul of the Security Council must include streamlined working methods and a broader, more representative membership that reflected geopolitical realities and prepared the body to fulfil its mandate of maintaining global peace and security, said delegates as the General Assembly began its debate on Council reform.

Palestine refugees were living proof of a conflict unresolved across generations and a contemporary symbol of the difficulties of peacemaking and the high cost of its failures, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) heard today as it began its consideration of the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The limits of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees were being severely tested by a combination of the unparalleled emergency in Syria and the persistence of all the other crises around the world, the head of that agency told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today as it considered refugee-related issues.

Commending progress and assessing shortcomings, the Sixth Committee (Legal) today took up the Secretary-General’s report on the administration of justice at the United Nations, and considered a request for observer status.

People and institutions with “deep pockets” were more likely to invest in businesslike models effecting social change because they tended to be more efficient and results-oriented, Tokunboh Ishmael, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Alitheia Capital, told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today.