Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budget) today voiced their concerns with a Secretariat appeal to delay the start-up dates of several crucial elements of the recent overhaul of the ways in which thousands of staff are compensated for their work.
During its forty-ninth session, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) had made great strides in its programme of work, including the finalization and adoption of three texts on secured transactions, arbitration and online dispute resolution, the Chair of the forty-ninth session told the Sixth Committee (Legal), as they took up that body’s report.
Obscene amounts were being spent on military budgets and to maintain and modernize nuclear weapons at the expense of such pressing global issues as sustainable development, climate change and the refugee crisis, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today.
Reporting on what he called significant progress in the Central African Republic in emerging from civil strife, the United Nations top peacekeeping official this morning stressed that the international community must stand firmly by the Government to overcome “spoilers” and other serious challenges that remained.
Implementation of the 2030 Agenda, Addis Ababa Action Plan and the Paris Agreement were the “moral imperatives of our time”, said General Assembly President Peter Thomson (Fiji) as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) took up the topic of sustainable development.
The Economic and Social Council, over the course of 2016, had focused on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s early implementation while also tackling emerging threats such as the Zika virus, El Niño and widening global inequality, the General Assembly heard today as it took note of the 54-member organ’s latest annual report.
Concluding its consideration of decolonization questions today, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) approved 20 draft resolutions for adoption by the General Assembly, four of them by recorded vote.
Femicide — the killing of women because of their gender — and other human rights violations targeting them were hotly debated today as the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) began its consideration of the advancement of women.
Two draft texts — one from France and Spain, and the other from the Russian Federation — addressing the conflict in Syria failed to be adopted by the Security Council today amid heated debate on content and urgent calls for humanitarian intervention for the besieged city of Aleppo.
Considering that the peoples of the world’s 17 remaining Non-Self-Governing Territories were still voiceless in terms of deciding their own future, the task of decolonization remained urgent but incomplete, many speakers noted today, as the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) continued its general debate on that issue.
