General Assembly: Press Release

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 on Decolonization, will hold its annual regional seminar in Noumea, New Caledonia, from 18 to 20 May 2010.

The wide-ranging efforts of the United Nations to better communicate with the world public will be reviewed in the thirty-second annual session of the Committee on Information, taking place at Headquarters from 26 April to 7 May. During the two-week session, delegations will review the activities of the Department of Public Information and its three subprogrammes -- Strategic Communications, News Services and Outreach Services -– in the period July 2009 to February 2010.

VIENNA, 22 March -- The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People at the United Nations Office at Vienna, on 24 and 25 March 2010.

This statement was issued today by the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on the situation in occupied East Jerusalem:

The United Nations today announced the selection of the members of the Senior Advisory Group for the Review of International Civilian Capacities. The Advisory Group, named by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, includes senior figures from a diverse range of backgrounds who couple operational experience in the aftermath of conflict with a deep understanding of the United Nations system and its Member States.

With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is calling for the adoption of a global action agenda for accelerating progress towards the Goals, when world leaders meet for a United Nations summit in New York, from 20 to 22 September.

Reports submitted by the Governments of Argentina, Mexico, New Zealand and Uzbekistan on measures taken to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights will be reviewed by the Human Rights Committee at its ninety-eighth session, which will be held in New York at United Nations Headquarters from 8 to 26 March 2010.

The following statement was issued on 24 February by the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in connection with the announcement by the Government of Israel concerning religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory:

Under the theme “The urgency of addressing the permanent status issues -- borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, water”, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean will convene the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace at the Dolmen Hotel in Qawra, Malta, on 12 and 13 February.

After an historic global recession pushed millions more into poverty and raised fears that the traditional system of checks and balances might fail to prevent another, the United Nations General Assembly used the main part of its sixty-fourth session to urge the creation of a more equitable multilateral structure that would see developing countries increasingly take positions of power, from the Security Council to the Bretton Woods institutions and other global decision-making forums.