General Assembly

“As we enter a new year, I am very concerned at the lack of progress towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People adopted on 14 January the following statement on Israel’s illegal settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem:

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) expressed worries today over the escalation of violence and mayhem in Côte d’Ivoire resulting from Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after losing that West African nation’s November presidential election to Alassane Ouattara.

Welcoming the genuine contribution of the International Organization of la Francophonie to United Nations efforts in countries like Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the General Assembly today invited the Secretaries General of those international bodies to continue exchanging information with a view to identifying new areas of cooperation.

The Secretary-General of the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries today praised those nations for showing “their ownership and leadership” in submitting a comprehensive, ambitious and forward-looking draft programme of action to be adopted at the May event.

Amid widespread concern that more of the world’s poorest nations had not graduated to the next stage of socio-economic development in the last 10 years, officials from developing countries pressed today for the fulfilment of development assistance pledges, reform of trade policies and the transfer of technology, while urging the United Nations to help devise specially tailored strategies to help ease the transition to prosperity.

The upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, which would determine the development paradigm for years to come, must come up with concrete ways to achieve sustainable economic prosperity in those 48 nations and improve the lot of their millions of poor people, the Secretary-General of the Conference said at the opening session of its Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting.

Amid mounting concern that the United Nations was losing ground to smaller and more agile groupings, the General Assembly — during the main part of its sixty-fifth session — was repeatedly urged to redeploy its heavy political capital and near-universal membership to regain its pre-eminence, and breathe new life into the very principles that had called the Organization into being: peace and security, friendship among nations and international cooperation.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today wrapped up the main part of a sixty-fifth session that aimed to boost the Organization’s efficiency by overhauling how tens of thousands of staff around the globe are hired, trained and paid, while continuing to modernize its outdated information and communications technology system.

Wrapping up the main part of the sixty-fifth session, General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) hailed the “constructive and cooperative spirit” that had prevailed over three months of critical, and at times challenging, deliberations on a range of issues, from poverty eradication and human rights to sustainable development and disarmament.