General Assembly

Five years after the creation of the Human Rights Council as the United Nations’ key forum for tackling entrenched human rights concerns around the world, the General Assembly today decided to maintain the 47-member body’s status as one of its subsidiary organs, concluding a year-long review of its work and functioning within the Organization, carried out in Geneva and New York.

Acting on the recommendation of its General Committee, the General Assembly today decided to include on the agenda of its current session an item on the “appointment of the Secretary-General of the United Nations”, paving the way for the 192-member body to take up that issue before the expiration of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s first term of office on 31 December.

Citing many examples of real progress around the world that testified to the soundness of the “people-first” approach embodied in the Millennium Development Goals, senior United Nations officials today said that, with the 2015 deadline for achieving those ambitious targets rapidly approaching, stakeholders must not be afraid to “think big” in shaping the final push, even as they planned strategies to alleviate the suffering of millions “who will need our attention come 2016 and beyond”.

Resuming its 2011 session this morning, the Special Committee on Decolonization approved requests for hearings from several Non-Self-Governing Territories in the coming days and approved without a vote three draft resolutions concerning the transmission and dissemination of information on decolonization.

Welcoming the progress made in the prevention, management and resolution of conflict and in post-conflict peacebuilding in a number of African countries, the General Assembly today called for intensified, better coordinated efforts between national Governments, the African Union, subregional organizations, the United Nations system and partners “with a view to achieving further progress towards the goal of a conflict-free Africa”.

Francoise Barré-Sinoussi, 2008 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for helping to discover the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), led strong calls at the United Nations today for integrating the global response to AIDS into broader health agendas, and for taking advantage of every opportunity to reach those living with HIV or at risk of infection whenever and wherever they interacted with local health-care delivery systems.

Deeply concerned that AIDS already had claimed 30 million lives and orphaned 16 million children since it was first discovered in 1981, the United Nations General Assembly today promised to partner with all stakeholders to implement “bold and decisive action” to wipe out what remained of an unprecedented global human tragedy despite significant progress in the past decade to combat the disease.

Paul De Lay, Deputy Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) hailed the world body’s expected adoption later today of a comprehensive strategy charting the global response to the deadly virus, including a commitment to halving sexual transmission of HIV by 2015, and a broader pledge to work towards increasing funding to tackle HIV/AIDS to between $22 billion and $24 billion per year by that time.

Women and girls bore a disproportionate burden of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and if Governments were serious about halting the disease in the next decade, they must throw their political weight squarely behind that issue by urgently expanding sexual and reproductive health services, legislating gender equality, and understanding that no gains would be made without ending violence against women, said participants today in a General Assembly panel discussion on “Women, girls and HIV”.

Innovative drugs, diagnostics, vaccines and microbicides to treat HIV infection must be developed urgently and made readily available worldwide, particularly to sex workers, homosexual men, intravenous drug users and others who needed them most, participants said this morning during a panel discussion held in connection with this week’s United Nations high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS.