General Assembly

George Wilfred Talbot, Permanent Representative of Guyana, was elected Chair of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) for the General Assembly’s sixty-seventh session on 4 September.

Desra Percaya, Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) on 4 September.

Vuk Jeremić was elected President of the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly on 8 June. At the time of his election, he was Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, an office he held starting on 15 May 2007.

Faced with conflicts in the Arab world and other global challenges, the General Assembly had “stood strong, active and responsive” over the past year, making key advances in dispute settlement, United Nations reform, disaster prevention and sustainable development, Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser ( Qatar), its outgoing President, said today, as the sixty-sixth session drew to a close.

The United Nations, as the global human rights standard-bearer, must step up efforts to realize the rights of persons with disabilities, both at the national level and in its own work, speakers stressed today, as the fifth Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities drew to a close.

With the world’s people exhausted from war and angered by short-sighted Government policies that padded military budgets and gutted social programmes, senior United Nations officials and eminent peace advocates today opened the High-level Forum on a Culture of Peace stressing that education, youth outreach and women’s empowerment were the keys to wiping out poverty, injustice and exclusion.

The General Assembly’s journey over the past 12 months had been momentous, historic and challenging, as Member States stepped up to address conflicts, significant political developments and other pressing global issues of the day, General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser ( Qatar) said today, just days before handing over to his successor on Tuesday.

Investing in children with disabilities during the early stage of their development was among the many practical measures that Member States should take, United Nations officials and delegates said today, as the fifth Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities continued.

The General Assembly today reaffirmed its central role on the “question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and related matters”, amid growing demands to crystallize areas of convergence on an issue that has laid bare the difficulties of revitalizing the United Nations’ twentieth-century peace and security architecture.

The General Assembly today welcomed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s highly-anticipated report on strengthening the role of mediation in peaceful dispute settlement, adopting a consensus resolution encouraging Member States to make use of the newly-published United Nations guidelines on effective mediation.