Plenary

Frustrated at operating procedures that had left the United Nations Conference on Disarmament vulnerable to “hostage-taking” by a single Member State, delegates addressing the General Assembly today debated options for reforming — or even abandoning — that “dysfunctional” body, while others countered that the 12-year impasse reflected the need to take a stand against a “clear pattern” of selective and discriminatory negotiations.

While some strides had been made to increase access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation — now regarded as a fundamental human right — efforts must be redoubled to provide access to safe water to the more than 1 billion people without it and basic sanitation services for the more than 2 billion still in need, urged experts and delegates in the General Assembly this afternoon.

Pressure mounted today for a way to be found to open a passage in the long-deadlocked Conference on Disarmament that would engage members in negotiations on such matters as a ban on fissile material for nuclear weapons, as the General Assembly held a follow-up to last year’s high-level meeting on revitalizing that body.

Senior Government officials at a special session of the General Assembly today called on Member States, with the support of the United Nations, to take action to enable young people to overcome widespread unemployment and other problems and to ensure that they participated integrally in global efforts for peace and sustainable development.

With young people leading the charge for social change around the world, reinvigorated investments in youth were more critical than ever before, said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today as he opened a High-level Meeting referred to, by one young delegate from Egypt, as a sort of “international Tahrir Square”.

Emphasizing the paramount importance of equality among the six official United Nations languages, the General Assembly today adopted a wide-ranging draft resolution on multilingualism. By that text, one of five adopted without a vote, the Assembly took note of the Secretary-General’s October 2010 report on multilingualism, and emphasized the need to use all the official languages appropriately in the activities of the Department of Public Information.

The Republic of South Sudan was admitted as the 193rd Member of the United Nations this morning by a General Assembly resolution adopted by acclamation upon the recommendation of the Security Council. “When we started our journey, we could hardly imagine that the road would lead us to this point, however much we may have hoped for it,” Riek Machar Teny, Vice-President of South Sudan, said as he delivered his country’s first statement to the Assembly.

The United Nations and its partners sought to ensure that the history of the twenty-first century was the first “not to be written in the blood of innocents”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as the General Assembly convened an interactive thematic debate on the role of regional and subregional arrangements in implementing the responsibility to protect.

In the early hours of the morning today, the General Assembly, acting on the recommendations of its Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary), adopted a peacekeeping budget of more than $7 billion for the period from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012.

Emphasizing the fundamentally civilian character of aid, the General Assembly today reaffirmed the need for the consent of disaster-affected States when using military assets to support the implementation of humanitarian assistance, in conformity with international law, including international humanitarian law, and humanitarian principles.