General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

Taking up a range of topics, the Fifth Committee was told today that it was “imperative” to have a support system in place for United Nations personnel that had survived malicious acts, natural disasters and other emergencies, and to coordinate with families of deceased staff members.

While recognizing measures taken by the Mexican Government to reconcile the country’s national legislation with its obligations under international human rights treaties, experts on the Human Rights Committee today expressed concern that the means of addressing incompatibilities between those treaties and laws below the constitutional level remained unclear.

While Mexico was working to build a participatory democracy that protected fundamental freedoms, the Government faced complex challenges in closing gaps in human rights legislation and reforming the laws, policies, and practices that gave rise to them, a senior official in Mexico’s Interior Ministry told the Human Rights Committee today as it began its ninety-sixth session.

Responding to the Secretary-General’s report on a proposed “accountability system”, speakers in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today urged that more attention be given to what the United Nations leadership could do to foster a sense of personal responsibility among staff, in order to better address what some saw as weak links between resource allocation and desired results.

Assistant Secretary-General and United Nations Controller Jun Yamazaki today presented the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) with the Secretary‑General’s request for an additional $1 million for three special political missions -- the United Nations Representative on the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban, and the Monitoring Group on Somalia.

Recognizing the tremendous global burden of fatalities resulting from road crashes, as well as the 20 million to 50 million people sustaining non-fatal traffic-related injuries each year, the General Assembly today proclaimed the period 2011-2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety, with the goal of stabilizing and eventually reducing the number deaths and injuries.

As the General Assembly gathered to mark the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action which remains the most far-reaching international commitment to women’s rights senior United Nations officials today told hundreds of women delegates that the fight against the disadvantages they still faced must continue, because gender equality and empowerment of women and girls was not just a goal in itself, but a key to long-term development, economic growth, and social advancement for all.

The Fifth Committee (Budgetary and Administrative) today began the first part of its resumed session, expected to last three weeks, approving the first week of its programme of work and taking up the report of the Joint Inspection Unit for 2009 and programme of work for 2010.

Taking note of the Secretary-General’s recent inconclusive report on investigations into possible violations of international law during the deadly 2008/2009 conflict in Gaza, the General Assembly today requested a further report in five months.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today that 2010 would be an important year for the Special Committee on Decolonization because it marked both the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism and the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.