General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this morning took action on a contentious text concerning reimbursement rates to troop-contributing countries that had delayed conclusion of the earlier part of its resumed session, and began the second part of its session, which is aimed at approving a peacekeeping budget for the year 2013/14.

Concluding its two-week annual session this afternoon, the Committee on Information emphasized that public information and communications should be at the heart of the United Nations’ strategic management, with a “culture of communications and transparency” permeating all levels so the Organization could best promote an informed understanding of its work among people around the world.

The increasing violence across the world against traditional and new media journalists alike undermined the very foundation of democratic societies, good governance, freedom of expression, and the right to receive and impart information and ideas, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said top United Nations officials and journalists today during an observance of the twentieth anniversary of World Press Freedom Day.

Meeting in a brief plenary session this morning, the General Assembly adopted, as amended, a consensus resolution on the modalities, format and organization of its upcoming high-level meeting on the appraisal of the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, deciding that it would take place on 13 and 14 May.

ADDIS ABABA, 30 April — As the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine wrapped up its session today,experts urged African Governments to share their negotiating and institution-building tactics, create a continent-wide solidarity movement, and launch a regional peace initiative to help Palestinians remove barriers to statehood.

ADDIS ABABA, 29 April — Welcoming the recent visit by the United States President to the West Bank and Israel and the subsequent resumption of $500 million in United States aid to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this morning said that now was the time for concerted action to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Recognizing that the “indispensable” partnership between the United Nations and the African Union remained a solid foundation for the peaceful resolution of conflicts in Africa, Governments in the General Assembly today welcomed intensified cooperation between the two organizations in order to stamp out all outstanding disputes on the continent.

With the quest to unite the African continent and transform it into a region of economic prosperity and social justice never closer to fulfilment, senior United Nations officials today hailed the “rise of a new Africa”, but also called on the international community to engage much more resolutely to help bring to an end the conflicts that continued to tragically claim the lives of so many Africans.

The United Nations’ Department of Public Information must perform a balancing act in expanding multilingual coverage of issues within the existing financial and human resources and finding the right mix of traditional and new media to tackle emerging communication challenges, delegates told the Committee on Information today as it concluded its general debate.

Through new media, multilingual information platforms, and stronger partnerships with Member States, the Department of Public Information was conveying the United Nations’ message to global audiences in a more cost-effective and coordinated way, its senior communications official told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.