General Assembly

As the General Assembly adopted a landmark outcome document aimed at promoting disability-inclusive development, during its first-ever high-level meeting on that topic, its President underlined the text’s significance as the instrument to guide efforts towards the creation of a fully inclusive society through 2015 and beyond.

World leaders will gather at the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on Disability and Development on 23 September to consider and adopt a resolution that calls for disability-inclusive development that affords persons with disabilities opportunities for full and productive employment and decent work, as well as access to basic social services.

Acting on the recommendations of its General Committee, the General Assembly today adopted the work programme and agenda for its sixty-eighth session, which contained 173 items, and endorsed the recommendation that its general debate, to be held from 24 September to 1 October, would continue on Saturday, 28 September.

Calling for increased cooperation among Member States, the incoming President of the General Assembly said today that the upcoming year would be pivotal for the 193-nation organ as it sought to identify the parameters of the post-2015 development agenda.

Acknowledging attempts by many of his predecessors to move Security Council reform forward, the new President of the General Assembly said today that he would work for consensus on what that reform should look like.

The General Assembly concluded its sixty-seventh session today, capping a year characterized by a mix of breakthroughs and failures, with the adoption of the first-ever global arms trade treaty prominent among the former, and inaction on the Syrian tragedy among the latter.

The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) concluded its substantive work for the General Assembly’s sixty-seventh session today, adopting a draft resolution by which it endorsed a procedural report on the work of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations.

Reform of the international financial system should include reducing its overreliance on credit rating agencies and increasing competition among them, speakers said today, as the General Assembly held its first ever thematic debate on the role of those institutions as arbiters of creditworthiness.

The Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations concluded its 2013 substantive session today, adopting a procedural report on its work.

Education was a primary tool for building a culture of peace, and the United Nations had rightly placed it at the forefront to that end, speakers said today as the General Assembly held a high-level forum on that topic.