General Assembly: Press Release

Following up on a key issue that emerged at the “Rio+20” Conference last June — how developing countries can obtain clean, environmentally sound technologies to advance sustainable development — the United Nations General Assembly is convening a series of discussions aimed at identifying options that could be employed to establish a mechanism that facilitates the flow of technologies around the world.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine in Addis Ababa at the United Nations Conference Centre, on 29 and 30 April. The theme of the Meeting is “African solidarity with the Palestinian people for the achievement of its inalienable rights, including the sovereignty and independence of the State of Palestine”.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People met in Caracas, Venezuela, on 17-18 April, and issued the following Declaration:

The thirty-fifth annual session of the Committee on Information, the intergovernmental body charged with reviewing progress in the field of United Nations public information, will take place at Headquarters from 22 April to 2 May.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 16 April:

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in collaboration with and at the invitation of the Government of Venezuela, will convene a special meeting at the historic Yellow House in Caracas on 17-18 April 2013. In parallel, the Government of Venezuela will be inaugurating a Palestinian cultural week.

Member States have completed a first round of discussions aimed at articulating a set of new set of sustainable development goals that will shape the United Nations development agenda. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a two-day inaugural meeting of the new General Assembly working group tasked with proposing new universal sustainable development goals that should build on the success of the Millennium Development Goals while inspiring and galvanizing action.

The United Nations General Assembly today established the Open Working Group tasked with advancing action towards implementing a Rio+20 recommendation to develop a set of sustainable development goals.

Against a backdrop of unravelling socio-political landscapes in Africa and the Middle East, weather-related and natural disasters wreaking havoc across virtually all regions, and uneven progress on the Millennium Development Goals — telltale signs the world in 2012 was becoming more unpredictable and dangerous — the General Assembly, during the main part of its sixty-seventh session, tackled a range of the year’s most critical international issues.

The United Nations General Assembly unanimously declared the decade 2014‑2024 as the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, underscoring the importance of energy issues for sustainable development and for the elaboration of the post-2015 development agenda.