Meetings Coverage

Although agreement on a counter-terrorism convention still eluded delegates, their decision to meet again and continue discussions on outstanding issues offered hope for the future, said the Chair of the General Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee on the issue today as he closed its week-long sixteenth session.

The General Assembly today confirmed the Secretary-General’s appointment of Helen Clark to a second term as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and also adopted eight consensus texts recommended by its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), addressing, among other issues, human resources management, progress in setting up an accountability system and the cost to recover from damage to Headquarters caused by storm Sandy last October.

Midway through its two-week session, the United Nations Forum on Forests this afternoon considered plans, including the introduction of draft resolutions by its two Working Groups, for the second week’s discussion.

The international criminal justice system — hailed by some as one of the greatest legal achievements of the past century — could never replace national mechanisms in building true bridges between former enemies, stressed delegates today as the General Assembly concluded its unprecedented thematic debate on the link between global justice systems and reconciliation.

ISTANBUL, 11 April — With preparations under way to elaborate a post-2015 global framework and a set of ambitious sustainable development goals, participants at the tenth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests today stressed that woodlands must have a rightful place in those policy-designing processes, while they also tackled the matter of new financing options for managing those vital natural resources.

States could not expect to attain the goals of peace, development and respect for human rights without supporting a robust international criminal justice system, which gave a much-needed voice to the victims of the world’s most serious crimes and held to account the elusive perpetrators, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today during the General Assembly’s first-ever high-level thematic debate on the role of global judicial bodies in fostering rapprochement.

ISTANBUL, 10 April — Civil society must have a say in how to sustainably manage the world’s forests, and activities involving woodlands must not threaten those whose livelihoods depended on those vital global resources, representatives of major groups said today as the United Nations Forum on Forests continued its tenth session today.

ISTANBUL, 9 April — Forestry and woodland management were critical to tackling a number of key sustainable development challenges and the most effective way to integrate related issues into the post-2015 international development agenda would be to create a cross-cutting goal on natural resources, the United Nations Forum on Forests heard today as it continued the Ministerial Segment of its tenth session.

The time was “propitious” for the General Assembly committee charged with negotiating a comprehensive anti-terrorism convention to take the necessary decisions, especially on the outstanding issues that had — for years — hampered substantive progress on such an instrument, said its long-time Chairman, as he opened the sixteenth session today.

ISTANBUL, 8 April — As the United Nations Forum on Forests opened its two-week session in Istanbul this morning, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan implored the developed world to end unbridled, irresponsible growth and commit to sustainably manage the world’s forests before it was too late.