As it commenced its 2017 coordination and management segment, the Economic and Social Council today adopted four resolutions and two decisions, including those recommended by its Task Force on non-communicable diseases and its Women’s Commission, as well as its Statistical Commission, which submitted in its report’s annex more than 200 indicators aimed at measuring the progress towards achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Speakers emphasized the urgency of expanding protected coastal and marine areas — one of the targets of Goal 14 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — as well as tackling the problem of ocean acidification during partnership dialogues on the second day of the United Nations Ocean Conference.
Spotlighting the scarcity of Earth’s most precious resource, the United Nations Secretary-General today urged world leaders to invest in water security, amid increasing demand and the burgeoning effects of climate change.
The inaugural United Nations Ocean Conference opened today with a call for urgent action to improve the health of the world’s seas, now in peril after decades of pollution, overfishing and the unattended effects of climate change that were decimating marine life, and in turn, livelihoods.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved, without a vote, a draft decision on the programme budget implications of a General Assembly draft resolution aimed at strengthening the United Nations system’s ability to help Member States implement the Organization’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
In a single round of voting today, the General Assembly elected Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Peru and Poland as non-permanent members of the Security Council for the next two years.
The Security Council decided today to extend the number of individuals and entities targeted by sanctions first imposed under resolution 1718 (2006) — an asset freeze and travel ban for those involved in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear-weapon programme.
The Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Côte d’Ivoire delivered her final briefing to the Security Council today amid plans to withdraw the United Nations peacekeeping mission in that country later this month after 13 years deployed there.
The General Assembly recognized today the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees in Georgia and their descendants, regardless of ethnicity, to their homes throughout that country, including Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia.
Despite global gains in the fight against the HIV and AIDS epidemic, some 1,800 young people a day were being newly infected with the virus and prevention rates among adults around the world had stalled, the General Assembly’s President said today.
