General Assembly

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in collaboration with and at the invitation of the Government of Venezuela, will convene a special meeting at the historic Yellow House in Caracas on 17-18 April 2013. In parallel, the Government of Venezuela will be inaugurating a Palestinian cultural week.

The United Nations and its General Assembly, as a uniquely representative body on the world stage, had a key role to play in the rapidly evolving system of global economic governance, said delegates and high-level speakers today as they gathered for the Assembly’s second thematic debate in as many weeks.

The General Assembly today confirmed the Secretary-General’s appointment of Helen Clark to a second term as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and also adopted eight consensus texts recommended by its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), addressing, among other issues, human resources management, progress in setting up an accountability system and the cost to recover from damage to Headquarters caused by storm Sandy last October.

The international criminal justice system — hailed by some as one of the greatest legal achievements of the past century — could never replace national mechanisms in building true bridges between former enemies, stressed delegates today as the General Assembly concluded its unprecedented thematic debate on the link between global justice systems and reconciliation.

States could not expect to attain the goals of peace, development and respect for human rights without supporting a robust international criminal justice system, which gave a much-needed voice to the victims of the world’s most serious crimes and held to account the elusive perpetrators, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today during the General Assembly’s first-ever high-level thematic debate on the role of global judicial bodies in fostering rapprochement.

Amid growing tensions, it was a “critical time” for Member States to put pressure on Israel to comply with international law in order to “open the door” to a meaningful political process that would lead to a two-State solution, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People this morning.

The Disarmament Commission was a unique forum where delegates could “think and debate” and — after years of stalemate — there was now a need to build on positive momentum and find convergence on critical issues, speakers said today as they wrapped up the general debate of their substantive session and moved into focused working groups to tackle the most pressing items on their agenda.

To a burst of sustained applause, the General Assembly today voted overwhelmingly in favour of a “historic”, first-ever treaty to regulate the astonishing number of conventional weapons traded each year, making it more difficult for them to be diverted into the hands of those intent on sowing the seeds of war and conflict.

The Special Committee on Decolonization — also known as the Special Committee of 24 — today decided to hold its Pacific Regional Seminar in Guayaquil, Ecuador, from 28 to 30 May 2013, to review progress in the United Nations decolonization process.

In a “very complex” security environment — marked by diplomatic divisions between national and international interests, slow progress on nuclear disarmament, and the “relentless” expansion of military budgets — the Disarmament Commission’s record would be judged less by the volume of its words than the quality of its outcomes, said Angela Kane, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, as she opened the deliberative body’s 2013 substantive session.