General Assembly

The Fourth Committee today concluded its work for the session with the approval of 11 draft resolutions and one draft decision, including, for the first time, a text on special political missions, bringing to 28 the total number of drafts it sent to the General Assembly for adoption.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) approved several draft resolutions today, including a text titled “Improving the coordination of efforts against trafficking in persons”.

The General Assembly would demand that Israel stop exploiting, depleting and endangering the natural resources in the occupied Arab lands, by the terms of one of five draft resolutions approved today by the Second Committee (Economic and Financial).

The participation of all States was crucial in enabling the Human Rights Council to conduct a successful second cycle of assessing the human rights records of each country — a process known as the universal periodic review — that body’s President told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today.

International financial stability was tied to the regulation of financial institutions so they did not accumulate too much risk, José Antonio Ocampo, Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, today told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial).

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today discussed the conditions of service of United Nations staff worldwide, delegates differed over how to address growing compensation costs and the widening pay gap between the Organization’s employees and their counterparts elsewhere.

The Human Rights Council, in striving to overcome political positions and fine-tuning its working methods to broaden cooperation with all countries, had made significant inroads on issues worldwide, the President of that body told the General Assembly today after introducing its latest report.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) approved today a draft resolution on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and heard the introduction of 11 texts, most of them relating to the promotion and protection of human rights.

The General Assembly today elected 14 States to serve on the Human Rights Council, the United Nations body responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.

The optimism stemming from the latest Middle East peace initiative had become fraught with dangers that could take it “back to square one”, the Fourth Committee heard today as it concluded its consideration of the report of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories.