General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

The Secretary-General of the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries today praised those nations for showing “their ownership and leadership” in submitting a comprehensive, ambitious and forward-looking draft programme of action to be adopted at the May event.

Amid widespread concern that more of the world’s poorest nations had not graduated to the next stage of socio-economic development in the last 10 years, officials from developing countries pressed today for the fulfilment of development assistance pledges, reform of trade policies and the transfer of technology, while urging the United Nations to help devise specially tailored strategies to help ease the transition to prosperity.

The upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, which would determine the development paradigm for years to come, must come up with concrete ways to achieve sustainable economic prosperity in those 48 nations and improve the lot of their millions of poor people, the Secretary-General of the Conference said at the opening session of its Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting.

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how tens of thousands of staff around the globe are hired, trained and paid, while continuing to modernize its outdated information and communications technology system.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.