The General Assembly today elected 18 members to the Human Rights Council for the 2025-2027 term, adopted a resolution on matters regarding the assessment scale for distributing the costs of the United Nations' expenses and concluded its debate on last month’s high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance.
The situation in Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa, took centre stage today in the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) as petitioners from both sides shared conflicting accounts of the human rights situation in the Territory.
The global backlash against women’s and girls’ rights has reached extreme proportions in certain countries, threatening to undo decades of progress, experts told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, as delegates underlined the need to transform structures of inequality and discrimination.
General Assembly President Philémon Yang (Cameroon) urged Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) delegates today to adopt a realistic, implementable budget for 2025 by year’s end, ideally well before the set deadline, and to plead with their respective capitals to pay their assessed contributions in full, on time and without conditions.
Highlighting persistent roadblocks and hindrances to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), speakers stressed the need to mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change, build economic resilience, boost financing and forgive crippling debt, as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) continued its general debate today.
The world is at a “delicate crossroads” with crises and conflicts raging in many regions,” General Assembly President Philémon Yang told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) during its wide-ranging debate, adding that the challenges before delegations is “immense”.
The United Nations must listen to the people on the ground in the 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) heard today from elected officials and petitioners from British Virgin Islands, French Polynesia, Gibraltar, New Caledonia, and Guam who detailed long years of colonial occupation as well as new horizons of progress.
Regional and global cooperation is essential to combating organized crime — from smuggling of firearms and narcotics in the Caribbean and wildlife trafficking in the Amazon to cyberscams in South-East Asia — delegates told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today.
As the Sixth Committee (Legal) today concluded its debate on the topic of the protection of persons in the event of disasters, speakers shared their national practices in managing the aftermath of such events, with many calling for the International Law Commission’s draft articles to be used as guidelines, while others underscored the importance of an international legal document to expedite disaster aid and assistance.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) elected Egriselda Aracely González López (El Salvador) Chair on 6 June.
