Meetings Coverage

The General Assembly today adopted a resolution encouraging relevant stakeholders to strengthen their efforts to promote peace, human rights, democracy, respect for religious and cultural diversity, and justice through education.

The Economic and Social Council today filled outstanding vacancies on the Organizational Committee of the Peacebuilding Commission and the Executive Board of the World Food Programme (WFP).

Libya could not allow the political crisis and armed conflict that had gripped the country for much of the past year to fester, the United Nations’ senior official there told the Security Council today, stressing that unless leaders acted “quickly and decisively”, the risks to national unity and territorial integrity were imminent.

The Security Council today, determining that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their delivery means remained a threat to international peace and security, agreed to extend for 13 months the mandate of the Panel of Experts that assists the Sanctions Committee on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Applauding the start of construction last month of a new facility for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in the United Republic of Tanzania, Stephen Cutts, Assistant Secretary-General of the Office of Central Support Services, Department of Management, told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) “this is a momentous achievement in the project, and is the result of successfully meeting all planned milestones due to date”.

The Security Council today created a system to impose sanctions on those blocking peace in South Sudan, with some members cautioning that such moves could derail Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) negotiations aimed at securing a deal by 5 March, and others expressing hope they would pressure rival leaders into ending the bloodshed that had plunged the United Nations’ newest country into civil war for more than a year.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) opened the first part of its resumed sixty-ninth session today with a review of its 2015 work programme and organization of work, the programme budget for the biennium 2014-2015 on programme criticality of safety and security, and of the role of the Joint Inspection Unit.

There had been a significant reduction of hostilities in Ukraine, another release of detainees, and the beginning of the withdrawal of heavy equipment from the line of separation in accordance with the Minsk accords, senior officials of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) told the Security Council today, cautioning, however, that those developments were only the beginning of a process.

Expanding the United Nations’ partnerships — with Governments, business, the philanthropic community, civil society and academia — would be central to effectively implement the new development agenda, Martin Sajdik, President of the Economic and Social Council, told the 54-member body today, as delegates evaluated how to harness their potential, including by setting up voluntary review mechanisms to assess results.

Covering diverse ground, delegates in the General Assembly today adopted two consensus resolutions by which they first addressed global geospacial information management, and then commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a historic event that had brought “untold sorrow” to humanity.