Meetings Coverage

The Fifth Committee today concluded its second resumed substantive session by recommending financial arrangements for 14 United Nations peacekeeping operations, which, once endorsed by the General Assembly, would total slightly more than $7 billion.

The twenty-second Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Law of the Sea concluded its annual session today with the approval of a 3 per cent reduction in the proposed budget of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for the biennium 2013-2014, bringing the total figure to €21,239,130, an increase of just over 4 per cent from the Tribunal’s previous budget.

The Special Committee on Decolonization this morning, resuming its session, approved by consensus requests for hearings from several Non-Self-Governing Territories in the coming days, as well as three draft resolutions on the transmission and dissemination of information on decolonization.

While efforts to halt new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths had steadily intensified in the last year, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pressed Governments in the General Assembly today to enhance prevention measures, provide greater access to treatments and step up badly needed investment for AIDS — as agreed at last year’s High-level meeting on HIV and AIDS — “so that we can win the race” against the epidemic.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea offered a unique, flexible framework for adapting to the Earth’s evolving political and environmental challenges, said experts today as the Meeting of States Parties marked World Oceans Day — commemorated annually on 8 June — and adopted a declaration on the occasion of the Convention’s thirtieth anniversary.

The General Assembly this morning elected Vuk Jeremić, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, as President of its sixty-seventh session, voting by secret ballot for the first time in more than 20 years.

Wrapping up its resumed 2012 session this morning, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations adopted its draft 2012 report and took action on outstanding matters.

Concluding a protracted voting process, States parties to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea today elected Muhammad Arshad of Pakistan as a member of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf following eight rounds of voting that took place over two days.

The Presidents and Prosecutors of the International Tribunals on serious crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the 1994 Rwanda genocide told the Security Council today that they had recently made great strides in completing their work and ensuring a transfer of remaining tasks to a so-called “Residual Mechanism”.

The Security Council this morning decided to extend until 9 July 2013 the mandate of the Panel of Experts of its Committee to monitor the implementation of the sanctions regime against Iran, imposed in relation to the country’s nuclear programmes.