General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The General Assembly today, meeting concurrently with the Security Council, elected Dalveer Bhandari of India to a seat on the International Court of Justice for a term beginning immediately through 5 February 2018.

Noting the transformation of the past five years of the Department of Public Information into a modern communications outfit, the Department’s top official this afternoon pledged to address Member States’ requests to bolster specific programmes and offices while calling on Governments to help with that process.

The need to fully institute multilingualism in the Organization’s information services, shore up the network of the United Nations Information Centres and increase the cost-effectiveness of the Department of Public Information were among the priority issues put forth today by delegates, as the Committee on Information continued its general debate this afternoon.

Through the strategic use of resources, digital technologies, social media platforms and enhanced partnerships with United Nations system offices and external media outlets, the Department of Public Information was expanding and improving the way it conveyed the United Nations message worldwide, the Organization’s senior communications official told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

While the Disarmament Commission had achieved the minimum necessary to consider its 2012 session a “relative success”, Chairman Enrique Román-Morey challenged delegates to also ask why — despite huge personal efforts and displays of flexibility — they had failed to achieve the consensus needed to allow them to prepare the ground for discussion of key disarmament matters elsewhere, in negotiating forums.

The Special Committee on Decolonization — also known as the Special Conference of 24 — today decided to hold its Pacific Regional Seminar in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, from 30 May to 1 June this year, to review progress in the United Nations decolonization process.

Recognizing the global public health and development burden resulting from road traffic crashes, the General Assembly today adopted a consensus resolution welcoming the national and local launches of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 in over 100 countries, the regional launches, and other global events designed to stem the “staggering” number of preventable casualties on the roads.

Specialization made a major contribution to economic success, but precluded holistic thinking, a mindset vital to sustainable development, senior United Nations officials said today, underscoring the important role of science in crafting a new paradigm that reflected the impacts of human activity on the Earth’s system and sought to devise ways to minimize or reverse them.

The Disarmament Commission met briefly this morning and completed the Bureau for its 2012 session with the election of two Vice-Chairs and a Rapporteur.

The General Assembly today filled three impending vacancies on the United Nations Dispute Tribunal, the panel inaugurated in 2009 to help bolster the world body’s system for dealing with internal grievances and disciplinary cases.