General Assembly

The following statement was issued today by Abdou Salam Diallo (Senegal), Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, on the passing of Nelson Mandela:

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took stock of the financing requirements for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, as it heard Secretariat officials shed light on progress in completing those bodies’ work and the transferring of their functions to a residual mechanism.

The 2013 United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights was awarded today to five individuals and one judicial body at the General Assembly’s commemorative meeting to mark the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It was urgent for the world to come together to sustainably safeguard the health of its oceans, which covered two thirds of the Earth’s surface, connected 90 per cent of the population, provided 350 million jobs, and had 1 billion people in developing countries dependent on the fish those waters yielded, delegates in the General Assembly heard today prior to adopting two related draft resolutions.

The General Assembly would urge that multilateral development banks continue to move forward on flexible, concessional, and fast-disbursing aid that would substantially and quickly assist developing countries, by terms of one of 16 draft resolutions the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) approved today by consensus.

The General Assembly today elected Jordan as a non-permanent member of the Security Council and appointed Morocco as a member of the Economic and Social Council’s Committee for Programme and Coordination.

The General Assembly, acting on the recommendations of its First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), adopted 53 texts today, reflecting both the common and divergent positions that had emerged during the session on such critical issues as nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, mainstreaming humanitarian concerns in that process, implementing the Arms Trade Treaty, and broadening the scope of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms.

Vanuatu and Equatorial Guinea were now poised to become middle-income countries, the General Assembly heard today as it unanimously adopted a draft resolution on graduation from the least developed category.

The General Assembly would stress the need to significantly reduce post-harvest and other food losses and waste throughout the food supply chain through increased promotion of appropriate harvesting practices, agro-food processing and appropriate facilities for the storage and packaging of food, according to one of seven draft resolutions that the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) approved today.

Appealing to the international community to confront a $65 million cash shortfall in its 2014 budget, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East today heard representatives of 17 countries pledge to provide voluntary contributions.