Plenary

The United Nations must increase its capacity to harness the strengths of external actors in its efforts to achieve international development targets, delegates heard during a debate on partnerships today.

The General Assembly today affirmed its commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, political independence, unity and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, underscoring the invalidity of the 16 March referendum held in autonomous Crimea.

The Peacebuilding Commission must better coordinate its work with key United Nations bodies, intergovernmental entities and donors in order to maximize its impact in post-conflict countries, delegates said today as the General Assembly reviewed the annual reports of the nine-year-old body and its principal financing mechanism, the Peacebuilding Fund.

Efforts to eradicate the legacy of slavery must continue, speakers in the General Assembly said today, emphasizing that the long-abolished scourge was “not yet a thing of the past”.

As the General Assembly began a special commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination today, United Nations officials and human rights experts alike called for robust strategies and policies to end socioeconomic disparities among racial groups as well as hate crimes and institutionalized discrimination, emphasizing that racism remained pervasive.

The General Assembly re-elected Achim Steiner today as Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for a two-year period beginning on 15 June 2014.

While significant efforts had been made since 2011 to realize pledges to prevent and control non-communicable diseases, progress had been “insufficient” and “highly uneven”, delegates told the General Assembly today, as they weighed priority issues to consider during a comprehensive review of the global situation later this year.

One week before the Olympic Winter Games were set to begin in the Russian Federation, the President of the General Assembly called on Member States to take concrete steps to promote and strengthen a culture of peace and harmony based on the spirit of the Olympic Truce.

Against a backdrop of imminent or impending wars, civil and sectarian bloodshed and strife between and within States, chemical warfare in Syria, grinding poverty and malnutrition, gender violence and deadly climate change impacts, the year ahead was “pivotal” for the 193-nation organ, General Assembly President John Ashe (Antigua and Barbuda) said at the opening of its sixty-eighth session.

Concluding the main segment of its sixty-eighth session today, the 193-member General Assembly adopted a $5.53 billion budget to finance United Nations activities over the next two years, including its judicial, humanitarian and peacekeeping operations worldwide.