General Assembly

Following is the text of UN Secretary‑General António Guterres’ video message to the Peacebuilding Commission’s Annual Session on Financing for Peacebuilding, held today:

As the COVID‑19 crisis unfolded into a human rights emergency, the Geneva-based Human Rights Council and its mandate holders quickly mobilized to carry out their work despite multiple challenges, its President told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, as some delegates raised questions about bias and favouritism.

Highlighting progress made amid COVID‑19 pandemic-related challenges, directors of United Nations regional centres called for increased funding to further advance arms reduction initiatives, while the heads of related entities presented reports on their activities, as the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) held the final virtual informal interactive dialogue of its seventy‑fifth session today.

Personal data has become a tool for Governments, scientists and companies in the fight against COVID‑19, the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, stressing that any increased technology use for surveillance or contact tracing must respect human rights and return to pre-pandemic norms once the virus risk has subsided.

The COVID‑19 pandemic and the subsequent disruptions it has caused have heightened the risk of trafficking in persons and modern forms of slavery, experts warned the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, as delegates engaged them in interactive dialogues, held virtually, on the broad theme of human rights.

Mass graves form an “underground map of atrocity” that stretches across human history, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, stressing that while dozens of such burials were found in 2020 alone, no single, coherent human rights framework exists for the respectful management of these sites.

The General Assembly today concluded its high-level meeting to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, with several Member States remembering how the Organization’s peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts lifted them out of conflict and put them back on the path to a better future.

A lack of ventilators and hospital beds to address COVID-19 has pushed Gaza’s overstretched medical system to the brink, the expert tasked with monitoring human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, stressing that Israel’s 53‑year blockade of the area amounts to a collective punishment banned under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Addressing threats to the global non‑proliferation regime, from halting a mounting wave of cyberattacks worldwide to totally eliminating atomic bombs, requires collective will, briefers told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today during a virtual informal interactive dialogue that highlighted recent cybersecurity developments alongside the Latin America and Caribbean regions’ contributions to a nuclear‑weapon‑free world.

Honduras deposited the fiftieth instrument of ratification to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, resulting in it being entered into force in January 2021.  The Secretary-General said the Treaty is a commitment towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, which is the Organization’s highest disarmament priority.