General Assembly

The prolonged Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories had placed a tremendous burden on civilians, and had an even heavier impact on children, “whose development is deformed by pervasive deprivations affecting health, education and overall security,” a top UN Official told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, Cultural) today.

Looking to move forward on agreements made at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries in Istanbul, delegates in the General Assembly’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today stressed the need for full implementation of the Programme of Action to address the many challenges and vulnerabilities still facing least developed countries, small island developing States, and landlocked developing countries.

The unregulated traffic-laden information highway posed a major non-traditional security threat, forcing cyberspace onto the international community’s arms control agenda, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard as its thematic debate continued with the introduction of six draft texts on the agenda, under “other disarmament measures and international security”.

Member States gathered at the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) meeting today prodded each other once again to pay their financial obligations in full and on time as they discussed improving the Organization’s financial situation and prepared to kick off talks on the 2012-2013 budget cycle.

With a nascent national human rights mechanism and freshly stated commitments to freedom and the rule of law, Myanmar stood poised to end its persistent patterns of rights violations and to consolidate democratic gains, said a top human rights expert at a Headquarters press conference today.

A pattern of violations had emerged regarding Iran’s treatment of civil society actors — including political dissidents – that spoke to unfair trials and the targeting of human rights defenders, and the best strategy for substantially improving those conditions was not to penalize the Government, but rather engage it in dialogue that would evolve over time, said the United Nations special investigator on that country.

The prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories presented extraordinary problems for the protection of the human rights and required stronger protection measures, particularly for the welfare of children, a United Nations expert told correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon.

Among several concerns about the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman highlighted today the food security situation there, as well as the situation of asylum-seekers from that country.

To create a true environment of religious tolerance and open dialogue, said the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief this afternoon, the method of communication and connection needed to be diverse and multi-faceted.

Information – from both new and traditional sources - was integral to an interdependent and interconnected world, especially in times of rapid political changes, calamities, and natural disasters, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) heard today, as it continued to examine efficacy with which the Organization disseminated its message.