General Assembly

Under the theme “The urgency of addressing the permanent status issues -- borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, water”, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean will convene the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace at the Dolmen Hotel in Qawra, Malta, on 12 and 13 February.

Just days ahead of the opening of the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the General Assembly took note today of the solemn appeal made by its President to all United Nations Member States to observe the ancient tradition of the “Olympic Truce”, during which warring parties would stop fighting and lay down their arms in celebration of the Games.

The Peacebuilding Commission must create closer ties with the Bretton Woods institutions in 2010, in addition to a more structured relationship with the Security Council and streamlined working methods to better and more swiftly help post-conflict countries sustain peace and development, Peter Wittig (Germany), the newly elected Chairperson of the Commission’s Organizational Committee, said today.

The Central African Republic configuration of the Peacebuilding Commission this morning called for stepped-up inter-community dialogue in the north of the country and improved funding for security sector reform, as it adopted its first biannual review of the strategic framework for peacebuilding.

Expressing sincere condolences to the Government and people of Haiti who suffered huge losses and untold suffering from the massive 12 January earthquake that levelled large parts of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, the General Assembly today adopted a consensus resolution calling for urgent actions to provide humanitarian assistance, emergency relief and rehabilitation measures to the strife-ridden Caribbean nation.

The States parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination met at United Nations Headquarters in New York today to elect nine members to the Convention’s monitoring body to serve for a two-year period, beginning on 19 January.

The creation of a Palestinian State coexisting in peace and security alongside Israel required more engagement by mediators of a “revitalized” Middle East Quartet –- the United States, Russian Federation, European Union and the United Nations –- as well as the active contribution of the Palestinian Rights Committee, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

After an historic global recession pushed millions more into poverty and raised fears that the traditional system of checks and balances might fail to prevent another, the United Nations General Assembly used the main part of its sixty-fourth session to urge the creation of a more equitable multilateral structure that would see developing countries increasingly take positions of power, from the Security Council to the Bretton Woods institutions and other global decision-making forums.

The General Assembly concluded the main part of its substantive session early this morning with the adoption a $5.16 billion budget for the United Nations 2010‑2011 biennium, and importantly, a resolution that maintains the current scale by which States are assessed dues to the Organization, reflecting a compromise between the need to review that formula and maintain a balanced approach to assessments.