Prior to approving without a vote two draft resolutions, the Sixth Committee (Legal) noted improvements in relations with the host country and stressed the key role of the General Assembly in the revitalization of the United Nations, as they considered reports on both matters.
As the Human Rights Council was moving into its tenth year, its record had testified to a high level of responsiveness while it continued to be actively engaged in cases of urgent and chronic violations, that body’s president told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today while presenting its annual report during an interactive dialogue the preceded a general discussion.
Challenges to the international community’s human rights mainstay were debated today as the General Assembly took up the reports of the Human Rights Council’s sessions this year. Hearing from just over two dozen speakers expressing fellow feeling with citizens of Paris, Beirut and Baghdad in the wake of devastating terrorist attacks in those cities, delegates discussed the way forward for advancing human rights around the world for every individual.
Prior to approving without a vote the request for Observer status in the General Assembly for the Union for the Mediterranean, the Sixth Committee (Legal) today heard oral reports of its three working groups, noting once again that delegations had been unable to conclude a draft comprehensive convention on measures to eliminate international terrorism, a situation the Chair lamented.
The General Assembly today adopted two resolutions submitted by its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) and appointed members to three of its subsidiary bodies.
The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) approved three resolutions today, one of them reaffirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and the population of occupied Syrian Golan over their land, water and energy resources.
A draft resolution that would see the General Assembly address the global refugee crisis and the role of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was among four texts approved today without a vote by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural).
Sounding a united call for future reports of the Security Council to the General Assembly to be more analytical and less descriptive, a score of non-Council Member States today addressed specific conflict situations, as well as cross-cutting issues affecting cooperation between the Council and other organs of the United Nations.
Unanimously approving a draft resolution on special political missions today, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) also concluded its general debate on Israel’s practices in occupied Arab territories, with delegations condemning its blockade of the Gaza Strip, violence by settlers and other human rights violations.
Disturbing evidence of continued human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories further underscored the need for Israel to end its long-standing occupation, speakers in the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) stressed today, as that body opened its annual debate on that country’s illegal practices in occupied lands.
