The Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization opened its 2015 session today with delegations debating questions related to economic sanctions, as well as institutional reform.
Over the past year, the United Nations’ 120,000 peacekeepers had carried out their work in “highly fragile” conditions — from asymmetric attacks in Mali to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa — laying bare the need for the Organization’s flagship enterprise to be adequately equipped for changing security realities, the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations heard today, as it opened its 2015 session.
The Security Council today demanded that Houthi rebels in Yemen “immediately and unconditionally” withdraw from Government institutions, safely release President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and all others from house arrest, and engage in good faith in United Nations-brokered negotiations designed to keep the fracturing Middle Eastern country on a steady path towards democratic transition.
Concluding its fifty-third session today, the Commission for Social Development approved by consensus four draft resolutions for adoption by the Economic and Social Council that addressed issues of African development, ageing, youth and the rights of persons with disabilities.
The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations today concluded its regular session with the adoption of its report, in which it recommended that the Economic and Social Council grant consultative status to 124 of the 330 applicants it considered during its session.
A dangerous political crisis had emerged in Yemen which, together with violations of human rights, widespread attacks by Al-Qaida, increasing secessionist tendencies in the south and an acute humanitarian crisis, threatened regional and international peace, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council this morning.
Expressing concern over non-compliance with sanctions it imposed to counter instability in Sudan’s Darfur region, the Security Council this morning renewed the mandate of the Panel of Experts on the measures for an additional 13 months until 12 March 2016.
The Security Council this morning underlined the obligations of Member States to take steps to prevent terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria from benefiting from trade in oil, antiquities and hostages, and from receiving donations.
Twenty years after the landmark “Copenhagen Summit”, speakers in the Commission for Social Development today called for transformative public policies that supported a rights-based vision of a world which uplifted living standards for society’s most neglected while recognizing the vast differences among countries’ abilities to bring about that worthy goal.
Parliaments, cities and local authorities could provide a “rich tapestry of opportunities” in the context of sustainable development, said ministers and other senior officials as the General Assembly concluded its High-level Thematic Debate on Means of Implementation for a Transformative Post-2015 Development Agenda today.
