General Assembly

The Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child today elected nine members to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The General Assembly today adopted 52 resolutions and 6 decisions recommended to it by its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), including one welcoming the establishment of “UN Women” and another that sets new standards governing the treatment of women prisoners.

The General Assembly today adopted landmark draft resolutions setting forth strategies to protect coral reefs and mitigate the ill effects of chemical munitions dumped at sea, while declaring international years and decades for the promotion of sustainable energy, water cooperation and biodiversity.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) met today to consider the financial implications of a General Assembly high-level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases slated for September 2011.

The Preparatory Committee for the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries held an organizational session today to assess preparations thus far for the event and to encourage delegates to give their input on the structure and themes of the Conference’s eventual outcome document.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved by consensus a draft resolution on the United Nations pension system, as it also considered the 2011 financing needs of the tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, along with the financial implications of three draft resolutions that emerged from the Third Committee and General Assembly this fall.

Recognizing ongoing serious concern about the direct link between the “rough diamonds” trade and armed conflict and the activities of rebel movements aimed at undermining legitimate Governments, the General Assembly today reaffirmed its strong and continuing support for the Kimberley Process and its related certification scheme aimed at ending the global trade in the “blood diamonds”, which fuelled brutal civil wars in West Africa and elsewhere during the 1990s.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took up the proposed financing for 29 special political missions for 2011, some delegates warned of the problems posed by the expanding and fluctuating financial demands those missions were placing on the Organization’s budget resources, an impact even seen in the outline presented today by Secretariat officials for the 2012-2013 budget cycle.

The surge in demand for humanitarian assistance in often high-risk environments — geared to support the growing numbers affected by the increase in frequency, scale and scope of emergencies — required effective, sustained and well-financed intervention by the international community, said delegates today during the General Assembly’s annual wide-ranging debate on strengthening the United Nations coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance.

Decolonization was a remarkable but incomplete chapter in the history of the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said today as he marked the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples by calling on the international community to remain committed to making good on its promise to end colonialism, once and for all.