General Assembly: Press Release

Vuk Jeremić was elected President of the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly on 8 June. At the time of his election, he was Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, an office he held starting on 15 May 2007.

Hundreds of advocates and experts on disability gathered alongside Government delegates today as the fifth session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities opened at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The Conference of States Parties — the largest international meeting on disability issues — is held each year to exchange experiences and ideas for the implementation of the Convention, which was adopted on 13 December 2006.

The Second Review Conference on the United Nations Programme of Action on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons opens today at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The Programme of Action, which Governments adopted by consensus in 2001, contains concrete recommendations for improving national legislation and controls over illicit small arms, fostering regional cooperation and promoting international assistance and cooperation on the issue.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene the United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace on 10 and 11 July at the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in Bangkok. The theme of the Meeting will be “International efforts at addressing the obstacles to the two-State solution — the role of Asian and Pacific governmental and non-governmental actors”.

The United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty — the most important initiative ever within this organization in the field of arms regulation — opens today at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Scheduled to run through 27 July, the Conference, the first of its kind, aims to elaborate a legally binding instrument on the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional arms.

The Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, also known as the Special Committee of 24, will hold its regional Pacific seminar on decolonization in Quito, Ecuador, from 30 May to 1 June.

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 on 30 and 31 May at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, in Paris. The theme of the Meeting is “The role of youth and women in the peaceful resolution of the question of Palestine”.

The Committee on Information of the United Nations General Assembly, in association with the United Nations Academic Impact and the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, will organize a special event to celebrate the first International Jazz Day on 30 April 2012.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 25 April:

The thirty-fourth 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 23 April to 4 May.