General Assembly

The General Assembly, acting without a vote, adopted three resolutions today, including one through which it will recognize 21 June as the International Day of the Celebration of the Solstice.

Opening the substantive portion of its 2019 session today, the Special Committee on Decolonization took up the questions of Gibraltar, Tokelau and Western Sahara, while also approving draft resolutions relating to the dissemination of information about its work and its dispatching of visiting missions to the world’s 17 remaining Non‑Self‑Governing Territories.

The General Assembly today elected 19 members of the Economic and Social Council, while also deciding to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter on 26 June 2020, and to convene a high-level meeting marking the anniversary later that year.

In two rounds of voting today, the General Assembly elected Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Viet Nam as non-permanent members of the Security Council for two-year terms spanning 2020-2021.

The General Assembly, acting by acclamation today, elected Tijjani Muhammad Bande (Nigeria) today as President of its seventy-fourth session, as well as 20 Vice-Presidents.

The General Assembly recognized today the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees in Georgia and their descendants, regardless of ethnicity, to their homes throughout that country, including Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia.

Warning that the United Nations is in the midst of a financial crisis that has been years in the making, the Secretary-General presented the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) with a set of proposals today designed to put both the regular and peacekeeping budgets of the Organization on more solid ground. 

While the global fight to defeat AIDS has produced remarkable progress over the past decade — with HIV infections among children and deaths from related illnesses among people of all ages nearly cut in half — greater efforts are needed to overcome one of history’s greatest health crises, delegates told the General Assembly today as they registered mixed results in reversing negative trends.

Concerned about the cash deficits of several closed United Nations peacekeeping missions, delegations today called for the speedy reimbursement of expenses to countries that supply personnel and equipment, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) reviewed the financial position of those operations.

Following an unprecedented rise of violence against religious communities and people belonging to religious minorities, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution proclaiming 22 August as International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, among other matters.