Plenary

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Vuk Jeremić joined delegates from around the world today in hailing the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías for his strong leadership, commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and advocacy on behalf of the world’s poorest.

The General Assembly today appointed Vinay Kumar (India) to the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, effective immediately, for a term ending on 31 December.

The General Assembly today decided that a special session on the follow-up to the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development will be held on 22 September 2014 in New York “in the most efficient and cost-effective manner”.

Launching today the 2013 International Year of Quinoa, senior United Nations officials joined South American leaders to praise the nutritional value of the ancient “superfood”, which Bolivian President Evo Morales hailed as an “ancestral gift from the Andes to the world” — a low-cost response to global hunger and the starting point for a more equitable international economic system, especially the food trade.

The United Nations General Assembly today established the Open Working Group tasked with advancing action towards implementing a Rio+20 recommendation to develop a set of sustainable development goals.

The General Assembly today adopted, by consensus, a decision establishing the composition of the 30-country Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, as called for by the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”) outcome document, entitled “The Future We Want”.

Against a backdrop of unravelling socio-political landscapes in Africa and the Middle East, weather-related and natural disasters wreaking havoc across virtually all regions, and uneven progress on the Millennium Development Goals — telltale signs the world in 2012 was becoming more unpredictable and dangerous — the General Assembly, during the main part of its sixty-seventh session, tackled a range of the year’s most critical international issues.

The General Assembly this evening — resuming a meeting suspended on Friday pending agreement by its Budget Committee — concluded the main part of its sixty-seventh session with the adoption of 22 texts, two of which set the rates Member States will pay for the regular and peacekeeping budgets over the next three years.

The Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review of United Nations operational activities for development, and implementation of the outcome document of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, were among the most prominent concerns today as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) recommended its draft resolutions for adoption by the General Assembly.

The United Nations General Assembly unanimously declared the decade 2014‑2024 as the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, underscoring the importance of energy issues for sustainable development and for the elaboration of the post-2015 development agenda.