There can be no atonement if there is no repair, the keynote speaker during the General Assembly’s annual event commemorating the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade said today, as many speakers joined the growing calls for reparations to the descendants of human beings bought and sold as chattel for generations.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the General Assembly event marking the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, in New York today:
Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s video message to the preparatory meeting for the international meeting “Stockholm+50: A healthy planet for the prosperity of all — our responsibility, our opportunity”, in New York today:
Humanity continues to do more harm than good to nature, with the planet facing multiple existential threats requiring urgent corrective action, speakers and panellists today told the Preparatory Committee for “Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all — our responsibility, our opportunity”, the international environmental conference scheduled for 2 and 3 June 2022 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Continuing its emergency special session today, the General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing that the Russian Federation’s military offensive inside Ukraine — and its humanitarian consequences — are on a scale that the international community has not seen in Europe in many decades.
The General Assembly resumed its emergency special session today to discuss two competing draft resolutions on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine — one that implicates the Russian Federation’s military offensive in the unfolding humanitarian crisis and the other that makes no mention of Moscow’s aggression against its neighbour.
The Special Committee on Decolonization decided today to hold the 2022 Pacific Regional Seminar in Castries, Saint Lucia, from 11 to 13 May, with a view to evaluating the colonial status of the 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories that remain under its purview.
The United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee will organize a virtual event on the margins of the sixty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women on “Impact of forced displacement on Palestinian women” on 23 March from 10 a.m. to noon, via WebEx.
As the Intergovernmental Conference, tasked with drafting a legally binding instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity, concluded its fourth session today, delegates decided to hold a fifth session with the goal of finalizing a new treaty and stressed the need to facilitate greater participation to allow all countries and communities to have a say in how marine resources existing outside of national jurisdiction should be shared.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated rising, pervasive and deeply rooted systemic racism around the world that must be dismantled and exorcised — including through reparations — speakers said today as the General Assembly commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, observed annually on 21 March, date of the 1960 massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa.
