Meetings Coverage

The amusement and laughter likely to follow the designation of 19 November as “World Toilet Day” would all be worthwhile if people’s attention was drawn to the fact that 2.5 billion people lacked proper sanitation and 1.1 billion were forced to defecate in the open, the General Assembly heard today.

Intense diplomatic activity to rekindle the peace process and achieve a two-State solution had reached a “decisive point” as Israelis and Palestinians had agreed, in principle, to return to the negotiating table, said the top United Nations Middle East official today during an open debate of the Security Council.

Despite fiscal woes that threatened to derail hard-won stability gains, Burundi had made significant strides this year in political reform and in preparing for peaceful, free and fair elections in 2015, the United Nations senior official in that country told the Security Council this morning.

Closing the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities today, its President told delegations that the lessons learned over the last three days needed to be taken home and implemented.

While Côte d’Ivoire was on the right path to recovery, it was still plagued by violence and deep political divisions, requiring continued international support as it geared up for a new electoral cycle in 2015, the head of United Nations peacekeeping said today in a briefing to the Security Council.

Many international development frameworks, including the Millennium Development Goals, overlooked disability, and the post-2015 period must provide equal opportunity for every person, Israel’s Permanent Representative said today as he co-chaired a round table discussion on disability-inclusive development.

Having paid the price for telling the truth, “they call me a dead man walking”, Mustafa Haji Abdinur, an Agence France-Presse reporter in Somalia told today’s Security Council open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, including journalists.

Many of the 1 billion disabled people around the world lacked the protections to which they were entitled, even though 132 countries had ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a senior official of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs said as the Conference of States Parties to that treaty opened its 2013 session today.

Beset by violence in neighbouring Syria and a political stalemate at home, Iraq had reached a “crucial phase” from where it could either continue to deepen its democratic roots or surrender to increased instability, the head of the United Nations mission in that country said today, as he delivered his final briefing to the Security Council in that capacity.

Reaffirming its concern at the alarming situation in Africa’s Sahel region, the Security Council today strongly condemned human rights abuses and violence committed against civilians there by terrorist and other extremist groups, vowing to address the complex security and political challenges that were linked to humanitarian and developmental issues as well as to climatic and ecological changes.