Meetings Coverage

Opening their ninth session, members of the Peacebuilding Commission’s Organizational Committee today elected that body’s 2015 bureau and chairs of its country configurations, as well as discussed its goals for the coming year.

Violence against women and girls remained pervasive and widespread throughout the world, with no one country able to say that it had eradicated those “abhorrent” crimes, ministerial-level speakers said as the Commission on the Status of Women continued its general debate today.

The urgency of integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment as a stand-alone goal, as well as a cross-cutting element of the post-2015 development agenda, dominated the second day of the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, with some speakers suggesting specific ways of advancing the overarching spirit of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

Speakers stressed the importance of transparency, equal opportunities for vendors, and streamlined processes, among other things, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) examined the United Nations efforts to make its procurement activities more efficient.

Describing a deep partnership between the United Nations and the European Union, speakers at the Security Council this morning called for strengthening the relationship further in a range of critical areas.

“As women thrive, so will we all,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as he opened the fifty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women today, marking two decades of progress that he warned had been “unacceptably slow” in achieving gender equality since the historic adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995.

Following the latest findings by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Security Council today condemned in the strongest terms any use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria, signalling it would take “Chapter VII” action if such arms were used again in the nearly four-year-old conflict.

Despite progress on the ground following the February ceasefire, the situation in Ukraine remained fragile and far from irreversible, the Security Council heard today from three senior United Nations officials, as members called for full implementation of the Minsk agreements.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) took up the topic of “accountability” in its review of the Organization’s efficiency in administrative and financial functioning, delegates welcomed continuing progress and pointed to gaps needing to be addressed.

Despite gains made since the 1995 adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action for Women, a renewed commitment to eliminating inequality was vital to reaching sustainable development goals, senior Government and United Nations officials said as they opened today’s General Assembly thematic debate aimed at inspiring women’s advancement in the run-up to agreement on a post-2015 agenda.