Meetings Coverage

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today recommended adoption by the General Assembly of four draft resolutions concerning its work, the work of the Division for Palestinian Rights and of the Department of Public Information regarding the question of Palestine as well as the peaceful settlement of that question.

A total of 14 draft resolutions were introduced in the Second Committee this afternoon on agenda items ranging from sustainable development to macroeconomic policy questions to globalization and interdependence.

As the Fifth Committee this morning considered the progress achieved during the first year of the construction phase of the Capital Master Plan, speakers stressed the highest priority of the smooth and cost-effective implementation of the project and its timely completion.

Underscoring the importance of dialogue and tolerance to enriching cultures and promoting understanding among faiths, the General Assembly capped its two-day debate on the culture of peace with the adoption of two consensus resolutions that sought to make peace a way of life for people around the world.

The slide to war that had threatened Africa’s Great Lakes region last year had been reversed, but the underlying causes of repeated crises must be dealt with, Olusegun Obasanjo, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the region, told the Security Council this morning.

Acting without a vote, a meeting of States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights this afternoon elected MahjoubEl Haiba ( Morocco) to membership of the Human Rights Committee, to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Mohammed Ayat ( Morocco) from the Committee before the expiration of his term on 31 December 2012.

The past year had witnessed a deterioration of the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as Israel intensified its military aggression, serious human rights violations and grave breaches of international humanitarian law, instead of pursuing peace, the observer for Palestine said today as the Fourth Committee began its annual discussion of Israeli practices affecting the human rights of Arabs in the occupied territories.

Deeply concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan eight years after the fall of the Taliban, the General Assembly today adopted by consensus a wide-ranging resolution that urgently appealed to the international community to keep working with the Afghan Government to funnel all possible and necessary humanitarian, reconstruction, development and other types of assistance to the struggling nation.

Twenty-two Member States pledged approximately $58 million today, during a pledging conference in support of United Nations development activities for 2010.

Briefing the Security Council today, the Representative of the Secretary-General in Nepal, Karin Landgren, urged the parties in Nepal to make the most of the 11 weeks remaining in the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the country, and to break their deadlock.