Meetings Coverage and Press Releases

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General Assembly: Meetings Coverage

GA/10860

With Crises in Food, Energy, Recession Hitting All at Once, ‘the World Looks to Us for Answers’, Secretary-General Says, Opening General Debate

Amid signs that countries were slowly pulling back from the brink of recession, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today cautioned world leaders attending the General Assembly’s annual debate that serious challenges remained, and that tackling the fallout from ongoing crises in food, energy and climate would require nothing less than rising to the call of an exceptional moment in history.
GA/PAL/1135

Palestinian Rights Committee Discusses Developments in Occupied Territory, Political Process, Report of United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Gaza

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, meeting back to back with the Security Council briefing this morning by the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, heard briefings on the latest developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and progress in the political process, and reviewed its activities since its last meeting in May.
GA/10857

General Assembly President Says Dialogue through United Nations, Revitalized Assembly, ‘Is the Way to a Better Future’, as Sixty-Fourth Session Opens

Opening the General Assembly’s sixty-fourth session today, incoming President Ali Abdussalam Treki of Libya underscored that the United Nations and, in particular, the Assembly, “is the way to a better future”, and called on people of all colours, religions and origin to engage in dialogue through the Organization and its most representative body.
GA/10854

General Assembly President Says United Nations Must Be Urgently ‘Reinvented', As Time for Reform Has Passed, in Closing Statement to 63rd Session

With the world and its peoples facing unprecedented challenges, outgoing General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann today decried blatant inequality in the international system, and urged Member States to generate the political will to tackle poverty, provide safety nets for vulnerable countries and, even more importantly, to reinvent the United Nations and its major organs.
GA/10853

General Assembly Adopts Text Recognizing Right of Return of Internally Displaced Persons throughout Georgia, Including Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Following extensive debate that included a motion by the Russian Federation to take no action that was ultimately defeated, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution that recognized the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees and their descendants to their homes throughout Georgia and that underlined the urgent need for unimpeded access for humanitarian activities to peoples residing in all conflict-affected areas in that country.

HR/5000

Equal Legal Rights, Access to Justice Crucial to Implementation of Disabilities Convention, Say Speakers as Conference of States Parties Continues

While giving people with disabilities the same legal rights and access to justice as the non-disabled was a formidable challenge, it was crucial to implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, speakers said today as the Conference of States Parties to the treaty continued its second session.