Meetings Coverage

States Parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination this morning elected by secret ballot nine members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to replace those whose four-year terms were set to expire on 19 January 2012.

Stressing that popular uprisings across the Middle East were demanding greater inclusiveness and democracy, General Assembly delegates called today for peace and justice — as well as “re-energized” efforts to resolve old regional conflicts — to reign across the region, as it adopted six related resolutions. By six recorded votes, the Assembly adopted resolutions on both the “Question of Palestine” and on the wider “Situation in the Middle East”.

Condemning the continuing illicit flow of weapons within and into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Security Council today renewed until 30 November 2012 the arms embargo and related sanctions on that country, and requested the Secretary-General to extend the mandate of the Group of Experts monitoring those measures.

The situation in Kosovo remained precarious and warranted the Security Council’s attention and leadership, Farid Zarif, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), said today.

The need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had taken on greater urgency with the historic transformations taking place across the region, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Touting the United Nations ambitious projects in information and communications technology development and enterprise resource planning as the “engine and enabler” of the Organization’s reform and strengthening, the Deputy Secretary-General urged delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today to supply the necessary funds to implement them.

“A historic moment is before Member States to act, to uphold their legal obligations and the United Nations Charter,” declared the Permanent Observer of Palestine today, as he challenged the General Assembly to rectify the injustice that had uprooted millions of Palestinians from their homeland and had led to nearly 65 years of Israeli occupation.

Just one month since the end of serious fighting, the Libyans had shown great initiative and responsibility in a post-conflict context “very different from any other”, the top United Nations representative for Libya told the Security Council today.

Transnational crime, pandemics, and climate change were three defining challenges, and as the nature of such threats continued to evolve, the Security Council — so central to our ability to keep the peace — must also keep pace, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council today as it addressed new challenges to international peace and security and conflict prevention.

Today, the Security Council, meeting concurrently with, but independently from, the General Assembly, once again failed in three rounds of balloting to elect a fifth Judge to the International Court of Justice.