General Assembly

With the much-anticipated United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development just a month away, and with intergovernmental negotiations on an outcome mired in minutiae, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called today for ambitious leadership to seize this “once in a generation opportunity” to transform ideas and aspirations into bold action “for the sake of our planet and our children”.

The General Assembly this morning, after defeating two proposals put forward by Syria, found consensus and endorsed the Secretariat’s recommendations for the accreditation of non-governmental organizations and other major groups currently not in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, but wishing to attend and contribute to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.

Deeply concerned over the slow pace of global economic recovery and the risk of another recession, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on Governments to strengthen their resolve to achieve sustainable development.

The international community must “take a collective stand” to create a new global growth model based on stable economies, social equality, decent job opportunities and greater financial regulation to tackle the ongoing global economic crisis, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and senior economic officials said today at Headquarters.

The lack of confidence-building measures on the ground, as well as the absence of a time frame in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, were among the challenges making the possibility of a two-State solution “slimmer every day”,a key member of the Palestinian delegation to those negotiations told the Palestinian Rights Committee this afternoon.

The United Nations General Assembly today narrowly avoided an “intense, politically complex” procedural floor battle after the Swiss Ambassador withdrew a contentious draft resolution, sponsored by “small” countries, containing a set of recommendations for making the Security Council more transparent and accountable.

Senior United Nations officials and Government leaders today urgently called for strong global action to tackle transnational organized crime and drug trafficking in Central America, which they said had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the region already and now was spreading to Europe and Africa.

Despite increases in Member States’ unpaid assessed contributions, at the end of 2011 the United Nations cash situation had improved in most areas and the amount of money it owed to Member States had declined slightly, the United Nations top management official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon, during a presentation on the Organization’s financial situation.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) scrutinized the budget proposals today for 10 peacekeeping operations for the fiscal year 2012/13, several delegates argued against across-the-board cuts and warned that reductions in Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, South Sudan and Kosovo could jeopardize the ability of the “blue helmets” in those countries to implement their mandates.

Since launching a five-year peacekeeping management road map in 2010, the United Nations had improved the cost-effectiveness and affordability of its blue-helmet operations without reducing their operational performance or ability to carry out their mandates, a top United Nations peacekeeping official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today as it took up cross-cutting issues related to peacekeeping financing.