Plenary

The General Assembly this afternoon, reopening consideration of its agenda item relating to the world social situation and to youth, ageing and disabled persons and the family, decided to hold a two-day high-level meeting on youth at Headquarters in New York on 25 and 26 July based on the overarching theme of dialogue and mutual understanding.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged the international community today to hammer out a concrete plan during the Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries to improve the plight of the world’s most vulnerable people and meet the 2015 deadline for realizing the Millennium Development Goals.

The General Assembly decided this afternoon on new rules for the election of the 36 members of the Executive Board of the World Food Programme (WFP).

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.

As the General Assembly convened its first-ever informal thematic debate on disaster risk reduction today, senior United Nations officials called urgently for investment in advanced planning and sound policies to help countries avert natural hazards that would cost more in human and financial terms than steps to prevent them or reduce their impact.

Expressing deep concern at the challenges to Member States and the United Nations humanitarian response capacity to deal with the consequences of natural disasters, General Assembly delegates today urged updating early warning systems, disaster preparedness and risk reduction measures at all levels to fulfil pledges made in the 2005 Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015, a global blueprint to reduce social, economic and environmental losses caused by such emergencies.

Welcoming the genuine contribution of the International Organization of la Francophonie to United Nations efforts in countries like Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the General Assembly today invited the Secretaries General of those international bodies to continue exchanging information with a view to identifying new areas of cooperation.

Amid mounting concern that the United Nations was losing ground to smaller and more agile groupings, the General Assembly — during the main part of its sixty-fifth session — was repeatedly urged to redeploy its heavy political capital and near-universal membership to regain its pre-eminence, and breathe new life into the very principles that had called the Organization into being: peace and security, friendship among nations and international cooperation.

Wrapping up the main part of the sixty-fifth session, General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) hailed the “constructive and cooperative spirit” that had prevailed over three months of critical, and at times challenging, deliberations on a range of issues, from poverty eradication and human rights to sustainable development and disarmament.

Acting on a number of outstanding plenary-generated decisions and administrative matters, the General Assembly this morning elected members to the Peacebuilding Commission, adopted resolutions on cooperation between the United Nations and regional entities, and outlined its plans for a major four-year push to assess, strengthen and reaffirm support for the world body’s historic 1994 action plan on population and development.