General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The United Nations General Assembly today narrowly avoided an “intense, politically complex” procedural floor battle after the Swiss Ambassador withdrew a contentious draft resolution, sponsored by “small” countries, containing a set of recommendations for making the Security Council more transparent and accountable.

Senior United Nations officials and Government leaders today urgently called for strong global action to tackle transnational organized crime and drug trafficking in Central America, which they said had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the region already and now was spreading to Europe and Africa.

Despite increases in Member States’ unpaid assessed contributions, at the end of 2011 the United Nations cash situation had improved in most areas and the amount of money it owed to Member States had declined slightly, the United Nations top management official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon, during a presentation on the Organization’s financial situation.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) scrutinized the budget proposals today for 10 peacekeeping operations for the fiscal year 2012/13, several delegates argued against across-the-board cuts and warned that reductions in Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, South Sudan and Kosovo could jeopardize the ability of the “blue helmets” in those countries to implement their mandates.

Since launching a five-year peacekeeping management road map in 2010, the United Nations had improved the cost-effectiveness and affordability of its blue-helmet operations without reducing their operational performance or ability to carry out their mandates, a top United Nations peacekeeping official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today as it took up cross-cutting issues related to peacekeeping financing.

Delegates offered a range of views on how to better manage the United Nations budget for both active and closed peacekeeping missions, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) opened the second part of its resumed sixty-sixth session this morning and adopted its programme of work.

Concluding its annual two-week session, the Committee on Information today reaffirmed the 1946 resolution establishing the Department of Public Information to promote an informed understanding of the work and purposes of the United Nations among the peoples of the world and, towards that goal, called on the Department to expand multilingualism, partnerships, efficiency, communications infrastructure and the use of new technology, especially in developing countries.

In the wake of the Israeli Government’s announcement to grant legal status to three settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, the Security Council must resolve to condemn Israel’s illegal settlement activity, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People this afternoon.

The Meeting of States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights today elected Yadh Ben Achour (Tunisia) to the Human Rights Committee, replacing one member who had passed away before completing his four-year term of office.

During a “jam session” of ideas at Headquarters this afternoon, musicians and musical scholars shed light on the role of jazz music in bridging communities and cultures and encouraging tolerance and social change.