General Assembly

As they adopted their programme of work for the sixty-seventh session today, delegates of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) aired their concerns about the financing of special political missions, budgetary discipline and the Secretariat’s perennial late submission of documents.

Elaborating a harmonized post-2015 sustainable development agenda and developing a consultative mechanism between the General Assembly and global economic institutions would top that body’s priorities during its sixty-seventh annual session, said its President during a Headquarters press conference today.

Commending Sierra Leone for committing to peaceful, free and credible elections, the Peacebuilding Commission today stressed the need for national leadership and sustained international support in managing the root causes of conflict, addressing emerging threats to peace consolidation and establishing conditions conducive to holding the presidential, parliamentary and local council polls, slated for 17 November.

A week of thoughtful and constructive interventions by the General Assembly’s Member States — nearly all of whom had touched on issues related to the theme of the sixty-seventh session, the peaceful settlement of disputes — had catalyzed a “fruitful discourse” on ways to stabilize the world’s increasing geostrategic volatility and unpredictability, said Assembly President Vuk Jeremić (Serbia) as he closed the body’s annual general debate.

Foreign Ministers of small nations today called on Member States to take responsibility for strengthening the international multilateral system through respect for the rule of law and with the United Nations at its centre, to overcome global security, human rights, economic, environmental and development crises, as the General Assembly held the fifth and penultimate day of its annual general debate.

With their countries locked in a life-and-death struggle against climate change — a battle they were currently losing — leaders of some of the world’s smallest and most vulnerable nations today warned the General Assembly that apathy about the health of the planet and “political cowardice” on reaching a post-Kyoto Protocol climate deal had left them one category 2 hurricane away from economic and social collapse.

In a move intended to bolster the chances for peace, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, announced in the General Assembly today that his Government would seek status for Palestine as a non-Member State of the United Nations, following what he described as “aborted” efforts last year to have the Security Council allow the State of Palestine to “assume its rightful place in the United Nations”, despite widespread support for the initiative.

Even with a slow economic rebound, bloody conflict in Syria and a deadly consulate attack in Libya casting a long shadow across the Middle East and North Africa — leading some to conclude that the Arab Spring had faded to an Arab Winter — leaders addressing the General Assembly today stressed that the international community, far from turning its back on the volatile region, must redouble support to all fleeing tyranny and seeking to determine their own destiny.

Heads of State and Government and other high officials of the nations that made up the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission this afternoon reaffirmed their commitment to bolstering the stability of countries emerging from conflict through reinvigorated international efforts, in a special event coinciding with the start of the sixty-seventh General Assembly session.

“I am here to sound the alarm,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, urging political leaders gathered for the General Assembly’s annual debate to overcome divisions and wilful blindness before it was too late to effectively address such global challenges as widespread insecurity, deepening inequality, government waste, and the impacts of climate change.