Meetings Coverage

The General Assembly today adopted landmark draft resolutions setting forth strategies to protect coral reefs and mitigate the ill effects of chemical munitions dumped at sea, while declaring international years and decades for the promotion of sustainable energy, water cooperation and biodiversity.

The international community must apply innovative thinking to reduce tensions generated by critical election processes in West Africa, Said Djinnit, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the United Nations Office in the subregion told the Security Council today.

The Security Council today renewed for 12 months its arms embargo on Liberia and its travel ban on persons deemed threatening to the country’s peace process.

“Women now are watching and waiting,” Margot Wallström, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told the Security Council today as it concluded its debate on that subject. Pledging not to rest until sexual violence in conflict situations had been eliminated, she said that, with the Council’s unanimous adoption of resolution 1960 (2010) yesterday, the tools to end it were available and now they must be used.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) met today to consider the financial implications of a General Assembly high-level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases slated for September 2011.

The Preparatory Committee for the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries held an organizational session today to assess preparations thus far for the event and to encourage delegates to give their input on the structure and themes of the Conference’s eventual outcome document.

As it began a two-day open debate on women and peace and security, the Security Council today requested the Secretary-General to supply it with detailed information on parties credibly suspected of responsibility for patterns of sexual violence during armed conflict.

Welcoming the conclusion of a peaceful registration process for the Southern Sudan referendum planned for 9 January 2011, the Security Council today urged the parties to the peace process there to fulfil their remaining commitments, quickly reach agreement on outstanding issues and maintain peace and human rights, no matter what the outcome.

Welcoming Burundi’s progress towards peace, stability and development and emphasizing the need for the United Nations system and the international community to maintain their support for peace consolidation and long-term development in the country, the Security Council today requested the Secretary-General to establish the United Nations Office in Burundi, as a significantly scaled-down United Nations presence, for an initial period of 12 months, beginning on 1 January 2011.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved by consensus a draft resolution on the United Nations pension system, as it also considered the 2011 financing needs of the tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, along with the financial implications of three draft resolutions that emerged from the Third Committee and General Assembly this fall.