Plenary

As the General Assembly today considered the recent progress reports of the two key bodies of the United Nations peacebuilding architecture, delegates gave generally favourable reviews of their track records in responding to the needs and challenges on the ground of strife-torn and post-conflict countries.

Warning that the past century’s heedless resource consumption had left the world at an uncertain crossroads, senior United Nations officials and Government leaders today challenged the international community to define and urgently implement a practical, twenty-first century development model that could “connect the dots between the key issues of our time” — climate change, population growth, poverty and environmental stress — and build a resilient, sustainable future.

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.