Meetings Coverage

Meeting to consider a range of matters related to its working methods, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today heard its members present the results of several reports that aimed to assist the body in better fulfilling its mandate, including through enhancing implementation of its recommendations and improving data collection on challenges, best practices and emerging issues. .

The lack of confidence-building measures on the ground, as well as the absence of a time frame in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, were among the challenges making the possibility of a two-State solution “slimmer every day”,a key member of the Palestinian delegation to those negotiations told the Palestinian Rights Committee this afternoon.

The United Nations General Assembly today narrowly avoided an “intense, politically complex” procedural floor battle after the Swiss Ambassador withdrew a contentious draft resolution, sponsored by “small” countries, containing a set of recommendations for making the Security Council more transparent and accountable.

Senior United Nations officials and Government leaders today urgently called for strong global action to tackle transnational organized crime and drug trafficking in Central America, which they said had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the region already and now was spreading to Europe and Africa.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was on track for a “breakthrough year” if the momentum built up by a number of recent positive developments could be sustained throughout 2012, the High Representative for that country told the Security Council this afternoon.

Somalia’s transitional leaders were making significant steps in completing the tasks required to end the political transition by August 2012, but faced with tight deadlines, a lack of resources, so-called political “spoilers” and the need to administer areas recovered from insurgents, they needed greater international support, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative said this morning.

The need for urgent action by Governments to ensure the protection of the human rights of indigenous peoples was highlighted by speakers today, as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues put its spotlight on the implementation of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Progress in the European integration process in the Balkans, reduction of tensions following Serbian elections and cooperation of the parties on practical issues presented a window of opportunity for settling all unresolved issues in Kosovo, which must not be allowed to fester, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative told the Security Council this afternoon.

United Nations and civil society experts today emphasized that indigenous peoples’ rights to food and food sovereignty depended crucially on their access to and control over the natural resources in the land and territories they occupied or used, as the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues weighed options for improving and preserving native food systems, and closing legislative gaps on land tenure.

Despite increases in Member States’ unpaid assessed contributions, at the end of 2011 the United Nations cash situation had improved in most areas and the amount of money it owed to Member States had declined slightly, the United Nations top management official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon, during a presentation on the Organization’s financial situation.