Meetings Coverage

The Economic and Social Council opened the management meetings of its 2019 session today with the election of members to several subsidiary bodies.

As its regular budget continues to face severe liquidity issues, the United Nations is depending on Member States meeting their financial obligations in full and on time to deliver on its mandate, the head of the Organization’s management department told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today as she laid out the Organization’s semi-annual financial situation.

The Security Council underscored the importance of peacekeeping as one of the most effective tools available to the United Nations in the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security.

Underscoring the importance of forest and nature education, as well as the need to mobilize private sector action, speakers today shared sustainability lessons as the United Nations Forum on Forests continued its annual session.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) opened the second part of its resumed seventy‑second session today with several speakers insisting that the Secretary-General’s proposal to cut a total of $382.2 million from the United Nations peacekeeping budget for 2019/20 must not come at the expense of delivering mandates authorized by the Security Council.

Convening two years after the adoption of a landmark strategic plan for the planet’s woodlands, the United Nations Forum on Forests opened its fourteenth annual session today amid renewed commitments to expand forest cover, reduce greenhouse‑gas emissions and improve the lives of some 1.6 billion forest‑dependent people around the world.

SAINT GEORGE’S, Grenada, 4 May – The process of eradicating colonialism can only be completed if the actions called for by the General Assembly are fully implemented, Grenada’s Foreign Minister said today, as the Caribbean Regional Seminar on Decolonization concluded its work.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues concluded its eighteenth session this afternoon, approving several recommendations which reflected this year’s central theme, Indigenous Peoples’ Traditional Knowledge:  Generation, transmission and protection.

SAINT GEORGE’S, Grenada, 3 May – Participants expressed diverging views today over the manner in which Charter principles of the United Nations such as self-determination and territorial integrity apply to Western Sahara, the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) and Gibraltar, as the Caribbean Regional Seminar on Decolonization entered its second day.

SAINT GEORGE’S, Grenada, 2 May – Opening the Caribbean Regional Seminar on Decolonization today, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for renewed commitment to accelerating efforts to end colonialism by 2020.