General Assembly

World leaders gathered at the United Nations today to inaugurate the High-level Political Forum which seeks to inject new energy into global efforts to accelerate action on sustainable development for future generations.

With the goal of injecting new energy into the global effort to implement sustainable development, world leaders will gather at the United Nations today for the inaugural session of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

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.