General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today wrapped up the main part of a sixty-fifth session that aimed to boost the Organization’s efficiency by overhauling how tens of thousands of staff around the globe are hired, trained and paid, while continuing to modernize its outdated information and communications technology system.

Wrapping up the main part of the sixty-fifth session, General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) hailed the “constructive and cooperative spirit” that had prevailed over three months of critical, and at times challenging, deliberations on a range of issues, from poverty eradication and human rights to sustainable development and disarmament.

Acting on a number of outstanding plenary-generated decisions and administrative matters, the General Assembly this morning elected members to the Peacebuilding Commission, adopted resolutions on cooperation between the United Nations and regional entities, and outlined its plans for a major four-year push to assess, strengthen and reaffirm support for the world body’s historic 1994 action plan on population and development.

The Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child today elected nine members to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The General Assembly today adopted 52 resolutions and 6 decisions recommended to it by its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), including one welcoming the establishment of “UN Women” and another that sets new standards governing the treatment of women prisoners.

The General Assembly today adopted landmark draft resolutions setting forth strategies to protect coral reefs and mitigate the ill effects of chemical munitions dumped at sea, while declaring international years and decades for the promotion of sustainable energy, water cooperation and biodiversity.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) met today to consider the financial implications of a General Assembly high-level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases slated for September 2011.

The Preparatory Committee for the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries held an organizational session today to assess preparations thus far for the event and to encourage delegates to give their input on the structure and themes of the Conference’s eventual outcome document.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved by consensus a draft resolution on the United Nations pension system, as it also considered the 2011 financing needs of the tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, along with the financial implications of three draft resolutions that emerged from the Third Committee and General Assembly this fall.

Recognizing ongoing serious concern about the direct link between the “rough diamonds” trade and armed conflict and the activities of rebel movements aimed at undermining legitimate Governments, the General Assembly today reaffirmed its strong and continuing support for the Kimberley Process and its related certification scheme aimed at ending the global trade in the “blood diamonds”, which fuelled brutal civil wars in West Africa and elsewhere during the 1990s.