General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

Just days ahead of the opening of the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the General Assembly took note today of the solemn appeal made by its President to all United Nations Member States to observe the ancient tradition of the “Olympic Truce”, during which warring parties would stop fighting and lay down their arms in celebration of the Games.

The Peacebuilding Commission must create closer ties with the Bretton Woods institutions in 2010, in addition to a more structured relationship with the Security Council and streamlined working methods to better and more swiftly help post-conflict countries sustain peace and development, Peter Wittig (Germany), the newly elected Chairperson of the Commission’s Organizational Committee, said today.

The Central African Republic configuration of the Peacebuilding Commission this morning called for stepped-up inter-community dialogue in the north of the country and improved funding for security sector reform, as it adopted its first biannual review of the strategic framework for peacebuilding.

Expressing sincere condolences to the Government and people of Haiti who suffered huge losses and untold suffering from the massive 12 January earthquake that levelled large parts of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, the General Assembly today adopted a consensus resolution calling for urgent actions to provide humanitarian assistance, emergency relief and rehabilitation measures to the strife-ridden Caribbean nation.

The States parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination met at United Nations Headquarters in New York today to elect nine members to the Convention’s monitoring body to serve for a two-year period, beginning on 19 January.

The creation of a Palestinian State coexisting in peace and security alongside Israel required more engagement by mediators of a “revitalized” Middle East Quartet –- the United States, Russian Federation, European Union and the United Nations –- as well as the active contribution of the Palestinian Rights Committee, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

The General Assembly concluded the main part of its substantive session early this morning with the adoption a $5.16 billion budget for the United Nations 2010‑2011 biennium, and importantly, a resolution that maintains the current scale by which States are assessed dues to the Organization, reflecting a compromise between the need to review that formula and maintain a balanced approach to assessments.

Recognizing the numerous difficulties faced by survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to encourage relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes to provide assistance in the areas of education, medical care, skills training and microcredit programmes aimed at promoting self-sufficiency.

In a bid to boost recovery from the global financial, economic crisis and tackle entrenched policy challenges to long-term growth, trade and sustainable development, the Assembly laid the groundwork for consideration of those issues by unanimously adopting –- out of 38 development-related actions put forward by its Second Committee –- several resolutions and landmark texts on food security, legal rights for the poor, and principles governing humankind’s relationship with the earth.