Meetings Coverage

BEIJING, 18 June ‑ The United Nations Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace this afternoon heard appeals to leave perpetual conflict behind, as experts grappled with ways to revitalize the two-State solution and re-engage the international community in that effort, amid regional turmoil and, by some accounts, societal and political indifference within Israel.

BEIJING, 18 June ‑ With regional tensions rising over relentless fighting in Syria, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today that “we must not lose sight of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, the resolution of which was no less urgent, as he called for a clear political horizon to break the impasse and maximize the present momentum.

The Special Committee on Decolonization approved four draft resolutions today, including one by which the General Assembly would stress the importance of implementing the plans of action for the Second and Third International Decades for the Eradication of Colonialism, in particular by expediting the application of the work programme for the decolonization of each Non-Self-Governing Territory, on a case-by-case basis.

Meeting to consider the question of Puerto Rico, the Special Committee on Decolonization called again upon the United States today to expedite a process that would allow Puerto Ricans to fully exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

The Security Council today, condemning all human rights violations against children in situations of armed conflict, and demanding that all relevant parties immediately stop such violations, reaffirmed its commitment to take targeted steps to deal with persistent perpetrators of those abuses.

The senior United Nations official in Kosovo and Security Council members alike today hailed last April’s historic agreement between that territory and Serbia as a step towards normalized bilateral relations, stability in the Balkan region and integration into the European Union.

The General Assembly today elected by acclamation John William Ashe, the Permanent Representative of Antigua and Barbuda to the United Nations, as President of its sixty-eighth session.

The General Assembly today adopted, by a recorded vote of 62 in favour to 16 against, with 84 abstentions, a resolution that recognized the right of return for all refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes in Georgia, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

States must strike a balance between the sustainable protection of the world’s oceans and their reasonable exploitation as sources of food, energy and employment for billions of people around the globe, stressed delegates as the States Parties to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea concluded their twenty-third Meeting today.

The Hague branch of the new global residual mechanism for criminal tribunals tasked with prosecuting war crimes committed during the 1990s Balkans wars and the 1994 Rwanda genocide was set to assume the functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on 1 July, as scheduled, the President of both of those bodies assured the Security Council this afternoon.