General Assembly

Participants in this afternoon’s round table discussion on non-communicable diseases stressed the urgency of international cooperation to boost national capabilities in prevention, policy formulation, monitoring and analysis, as well as building health-care systems.

Non-communicable diseases were quickly becoming a threat to socio-economic development in the world’s poorest countries, speakers participating in the first round table of the General Assembly’s high-level meeting on the subject said this morning.

Proclaiming the spread of non-communicable diseases a socio-economic and development challenge of “epidemic proportions,” Governments today pledged to work with the United Nations to adopt before the end of 2012 targets to combat heart disease, cancers, diabetes and lung disease and to devise voluntary policies that cut smoking and slashed the high salt, sugar and fat content in foods that caused them.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) met this morning to fill vacant positions on its Bureau for the upcoming sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly.

The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) met this morning to fill vacant positions on its Bureau for the upcoming sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly.

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) met this morning to fill vacant positions on its Bureau for the upcoming sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly.

The United Nations General Assembly this morning adopted the agenda for its sixty-sixth session during a meeting which required two recorded votes to allow representatives of Libya’s National Transitional Council to stand for the strife-torn North African country in the world body’s work for the coming year.

Hernán Salinas Burgos, Director of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, was elected Chair of the Sixth Committee (Legal) on 22 June 2011.

Simona-Mirela Miculescu, Permanent Representative of Romania to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) on 22 June 2011.