General Assembly

It was time to place a value on unpaid work carried out by women, the head of UN-Women stressed today as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) considered poverty eradication.

Although the “special responsibility” of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) to tackle the myriad challenges of disarmament and non-proliferation was not easy or quick, those efforts should not be allowed to “wither on the vine”, Genxin Li, Director of Legal and External Relations of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), said today as the Committee began its thematic debate on nuclear weapons.

While acknowledging the overall financial health of the United Nations, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) voiced their worries today about the unpaid assessments that produce a cash flow shortage in the Organization’s regular budget each December.

In one round of voting, the General Assembly today elected Chad, Chile, Lithuania, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia to serve as non-permanent members of the Security Council for the next two years.

“Working with you,” Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, told the Fourth Committee today as it opened its yearly consideration of questions relating to information, “we can, through action and message, help to sustain — or to win — the engagement and support of the peoples you represent.”

Child deaths had fallen dramatically from 12 million a year in 1990 to 6.9 million in 2011, but 18,000 children were still dying every day, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, urging States to design policies and programmes targeted at “hard-to-reach” populations, such as children in armed conflict.

United Nations officials and experts on mission who committed serious crimes tarnished the Organization’s credibility and must be held accountable, delegates told the Sixth Committee today as they took up the Secretary-General’s report on the matter.

Free trade, increased investment, debt relief and efficient governance should lead the global response to development challenges, the representative of Saint Lucia said today as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) took up macroeconomic policy.

Tackling seemingly intractable disarmament and non-proliferation problems with “virtually moribund” disarmament machinery signalled an urgent need to “breathe new life” into attempts to remove the roadblocks, said delegates today in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), concluding the general debate segment of the session.

Reiterating its conviction of the need for the eradication of colonialism, the Fourth Committee today concluded its annual consideration of the question of decolonization, and forwarded 11 draft resolutions to the General Assembly, six of them approved without a vote.