Meetings Coverage

In an unprecedented move today, the United Nations General Assembly suspended Libya’s membership in the Human Rights Council, the Organization’s pre-eminent human rights body, expressing its deep concern about the situation in that country in the wake of Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s violent crackdown on anti-Government protestors.

Access to the most basic transport infrastructure was still lacking in many areas around the world, while changes were needed at all levels of society in the management of chemicals, participants said during today’s Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the nineteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Violence against women remained the most prevalent and pervasive form of human rights violations and its elimination depended on the effective implementation of standards to ensure that its root causes and consequences were pursued at all levels, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today, as it tackled a host of issues related to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment around the world.

The Security Council today welcomed the first report of the Ombudsperson charged with aiding in the consideration of requests by individuals and organizations seeking removal from the list created by the Council’s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

The challenges presented by a fragile and uneven global economic recovery continued to threaten progress towards sustainable development, Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, told the Commission on Sustainable Development today at the opening of the week-long Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the Commission’s nineteenth session.

Deploring what it called “the gross and systematic violation of human rights” in strife-torn Libya, the Security Council this evening demanded an end to the violence and decided to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court while imposing an arms embargo on the country and a travel ban and assets freeze on the family of Muammar Al-Qadhafi and certain Government officials.

While more Governments were adopting laws and policies to address the multiple forms of violence against girls, those youths still bore the heaviest burden of the failure to secure equitable development for all — as victims of female genital mutilation, rape and both commercial and sexual exploitation — a scenario which, if left unchecked, would morally doom efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today.

Warning that “fundamental peace and security issues are at stake in Libya”, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today briefed the Security Council on the situation in that country — where more than 1,000 people have been killed as security forces and militiamen loyal to leader Muammar Al-Qadhafi continued their deadly assault on civilian protesters — and urged members to consider concrete action to stop the violence and end the loss of life.

Guinea-Bissau had made progress towards emerging from the political turmoil of the past few years, including the approval of a road map for security-sector reform, but deep concerns remained, representatives of the Secretariat and the Peacebuilding Commission told the Security Council today. “There has been progress in the political and security environments, although the situation remains complex and tenuous,” said Joseph Mutaboba, Representative of the Secretary-General.