General Assembly

With the changing political landscape in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond as a backdrop, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women had a vital role to play in redressing entrenched ills, including harmful traditional practices, sexual violence, persistent discrimination and a lack of access to education and employment, top United Nations human rights official Ivan Simonović said today as he opened the treaty body’s forty-ninth session.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), following days of what its Chairman called “very difficult and at times unorthodox” negotiations, closed its second resumed session this morning by approving the budgets for 13 United Nations peacekeeping operations, and agreed also on a one-time supplemental payment of $85 million over the next year to troop-contributing countries.

Emphasizing the fundamentally civilian character of aid, the General Assembly today reaffirmed the need for the consent of disaster-affected States when using military assets to support the implementation of humanitarian assistance, in conformity with international law, including international humanitarian law, and humanitarian principles.

In the early hours of the morning today, the General Assembly, acting on the recommendations of its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), adopted a peacekeeping budget of more than $7 billion for the period from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012.

Convinced that the United Nations must continue to improve its peacekeeping capabilities and enhance the effective deployment of its operations, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) today approved, without a vote, a draft resolution by which the General Assembly would review the implementation of previous proposals of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations and consider new ones, so that the Organization could fulfil its responsibilities in that field.

BRUSSELS, 29 June — As it closed in Brussels this afternoon, the United Nations International Meeting in Support of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process issued a call to the European Union and its Member States to support recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations during the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly.

Recalling that Member States committed to assisting the world’s 48 least developed countries with an overarching goal of enabling half of them to meet the criteria for graduation from that status by 2020, the General Assembly today adopted a consensus resolution reiterating that graduation not disrupt development progress already achieved.

BRUSSELS, 28 June — The viability of the two-State solution, the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative and the effectiveness of the Quartet’s Road Map in bringing about a just and lasting settlement of the Middle East conflict — along with Europe’s role in reaching that goal — were examined this afternoon as the United Nations International Meeting in Support of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process held its first plenary session in Brussels.

BRUSSELS, 28 June — Given the frozen state of Middle East peace negotiations at the present critical time, the international community must do its part to bring the parties back to the table, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message to the United Nations International Meeting in Support of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, which opened this morning in Brussels.

With gaps in the world’s multilateral frameworks hindering the international community’s ability to comprehensively and equitably meet the most critical global challenges, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for improving the multilateral system’s coherence and efficiency today as the General Assembly convened a day-long informal thematic debate on the United Nations in global governance.