General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

As the General Assembly concluded its debate today on challenges to achieving the human right to water and sanitation in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, delegates shed light on their nations’ struggles to resolve the practical implications of that quest.

Frustrated at operating procedures that had left the United Nations Conference on Disarmament vulnerable to “hostage-taking” by a single Member State, delegates addressing the General Assembly today debated options for reforming — or even abandoning — that “dysfunctional” body, while others countered that the 12-year impasse reflected the need to take a stand against a “clear pattern” of selective and discriminatory negotiations.

The Palestinian people had completed their two-year state-building programme, fulfilling a substantial part of their “contract” with the United Nations, and it was now time for the international community to uphold its end of the deal so that they would see the Organization admit their viable and independent State during the General Assembly’s sixty-sixth session, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer for Palestine, told the Palestinian Rights Committee today.

While some strides had been made to increase access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation — now regarded as a fundamental human right — efforts must be redoubled to provide access to safe water to the more than 1 billion people without it and basic sanitation services for the more than 2 billion still in need, urged experts and delegates in the General Assembly this afternoon.

Pressure mounted today for a way to be found to open a passage in the long-deadlocked Conference on Disarmament that would engage members in negotiations on such matters as a ban on fissile material for nuclear weapons, as the General Assembly held a follow-up to last year’s high-level meeting on revitalizing that body.

Senior Government officials at a special session of the General Assembly today called on Member States, with the support of the United Nations, to take action to enable young people to overcome widespread unemployment and other problems and to ensure that they participated integrally in global efforts for peace and sustainable development.

With young people leading the charge for social change around the world, reinvigorated investments in youth were more critical than ever before, said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today as he opened a High-level Meeting referred to, by one young delegate from Egypt, as a sort of “international Tahrir Square”.

Singapore’s delegation to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women asserted today that gender equality was central to the country’s burgeoning socio-economic growth and responded to the Committee’s concerns over trafficking in persons, reservations to the women’s Convention, reinforced stereotypes and other issues, as it presented its latest periodic report.

Ratification by Djibouti of the international women’s Convention in 1999 had sparked a transformation in Djibouti that had “changed the landscape of the country”, the head of the delegation and Minister of the Promotion of Women and Family Planning of Djibouti said today, as the State party appeared before the monitoring Committee for its first-ever periodic review of implementation.

The delegation of Nepal today assured experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women that gender violence, discrimination and protection of minorities were being considered in the constitutional process under way and that strong measures were being taken to combat human trafficking and harmful social practices, as that country’s combined fourth and fifth periodic report came under review.