Meetings Coverage

The Chairman of the General Assembly committee negotiating a comprehensive anti-terrorism convention opened the panel’s fifteenth session this afternoon encouraging delegates to resolve outstanding issues “which have occupied us for some years”, especially since there was now broad agreement on the bulk of the text of the proposed treaty.

With calls for good governance, transparency, trustworthy legal systems and accountability for crimes ringing out from the Arab world to Africa, Asia and Europe, the rule of law represented the world’s “best hope for building peaceful, prosperous societies”, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly today during an informal thematic debate convened as part of the preparatory process for the high-level meeting on the rule of law planned for 2012.

While Iraqi political leaders had formed a power-sharing Government in December 2010, ending a nine-month stalemate following national elections in March of last year, the Iraqi people were still concerned over the country’s lack of adequate employment, basic services and accountability, the United Nations top political official on Iraq told the Security Council today.

Thirty years into the AIDS epidemic, and 10 years after the landmark General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, it was clear that the energy and activism of civil society had been crucial to progress against the epidemic, and Governments and civil society must forge stronger partnerships to adapt the global response to quickly changing realities on the ground, the General Assembly was told today, as it convened an informal interactive hearing with civil society.

The Secretary-General of the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries characterized negotiations towards commitments for development assistance to those countries as making “encouraging but slow progress”, as the second session of the Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee closed this afternoon.

An annual International Day of Human Space Flight was declared by the General Assembly this afternoon, to be celebrated on 12 April, the date of the first manned space flight in 1961.

In a brief organizational meeting today, the United Nations Disarmament Commission elected Knut Langeland (Norway) as Chair of its Working Group I, dedicated to “recommendations for achieving the objective of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons”.

Recognizing the interconnected nature of earthquake-devastated Haiti’s long-term recovery and development challenges and expressing concern for the most vulnerable groups of Haitian society, the Security Council today called on the international community to continue supporting Haitian authorities strengthen core governance structures and ensure that vulnerable people had access to basic social services, justice and protection.

Concrete action towards the goal of complete nuclear disarmament, while guaranteeing the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, was urgently needed — both to ensure a safer world and to prove the value of the “struggling” Disarmament Commission, whose reputation had been tarnished by years of inaction, delegates said today, as they wrapped up the general debate of its 2011 substantive session.

While it was still very difficult to know how long it will take for conflict in Libya to be resolved, the responsibility for finding a solution lay with the Libyan people themselves, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Abdul Ilah al-Khatib, told the Security Council today during a briefing on his second mission to the country and other recent events there.