Meetings Coverage

Convening in a brief organizational session this afternoon, the Economic and Social Council decided on the division of responsibilities among its President, Néstor Osorio (Colombia), and four of its Vice-Presidents to Chair the various segments of its 2013 substantive session, to be held in July.

Adopting its 2013 draft report, the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on Strengthening the Role of the Organization concluded its regular session today, forwarding its recommendations to the General Assembly.

ROME, 27 February — The situations that triggered humanitarian strife in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — severe restrictions on movement and constraints on livelihoods — were man-made: the consequence of Israel’s occupation, experts said today as the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People held its first plenary session.

ROME, 27 February — With cash-starved Palestinian institutions standing on “political quicksand”, and mounting tensions in the West Bank over settlement construction and the recent death of a Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the parties to refrain from actions that could undermine the prospects of reopening long-stalled peace negotiations.

It was a moment of “heightened risks across multiple fronts” in the Middle East, the United Nations political chief told the Security Council today, saying it was time to end the conflict and the occupation that had scarred the lives of far too many Israelis and Palestinians for far too long, as well as reverse the destructive military spiral in Syria that “churns more forcefully each day and threatens to pull its neighbours, most notably, Lebanon, into its vortex”.

In a brief plenary meeting today, the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization elected Marcel Van den Bogaard ( Netherlands), from the Western European States Group, as Vice-President of its 2013 session, concluding the election of its bureau members.

Painting a troubling picture of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an ever-growing number of violent, destructive rebel groups was battling for territory while terrorizing local populations, the top United Nations official in the country appealed to the Security Council today urgently to consider authorizing an additional military brigade to help the overstretched peacekeeping mission there deal with a “daunting array” of challenges.

Stressing that the complex situation facing Guinea-Bissau undermined the smooth functioning of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office there (UNIOGBIS), as well as that of the Peacebuilding Commission, the Security Council today extended the mission’s current mandate for just three months to give the Secretary-General time to assess the situation on the ground and make recommendations, by 30 April, on its possible realignment.

Opening the 2013 substantive session of the Special Committee on Decolonization, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on that body to devise “fresh and creative” approaches in mobilizing the political will needed to eradicate colonialism, saying it had no place in the modern world.

The General Assembly today decided that a special session on the follow-up to the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development will be held on 22 September 2014 in New York “in the most efficient and cost-effective manner”.