Plenary

Only 17 days ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon today refuted reports that the talks on reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions would fall short of expectations, and called on Member States to forge the political determination needed to broker a comprehensive deal that would create the climate security all nations desired.

Mirroring the international community’s growing awareness of the trauma that people and their Governments suffered when their cultural properties were stolen or trafficked, the General Assembly today considered a draft resolution that asked Member States to actively cooperate in returning displaced cultural artefacts to their rightful home countries.

While near-consensus had been reached on many issues that had stymied reform of the Security Council for years, questions about exactly how to expand the 15‑member body in a way that guaranteed its effectiveness remained a stubborn snag in building on progress, General Assembly delegates said today as they wrapped up their two-day joint debate on those and other security matters.

A new tone of flexibility and compromise emerged during the General Assembly’s annual debate on Security Council reform, as delegates vowed to push towards achieving a model that would produce the elusive consensus needed to revamp the United Nations’ most recognizable body.

Underscoring the importance of dialogue and tolerance to enriching cultures and promoting understanding among faiths, the General Assembly capped its two-day debate on the culture of peace with the adoption of two consensus resolutions that sought to make peace a way of life for people around the world.

Deeply concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan eight years after the fall of the Taliban, the General Assembly today adopted by consensus a wide-ranging resolution that urgently appealed to the international community to keep working with the Afghan Government to funnel all possible and necessary humanitarian, reconstruction, development and other types of assistance to the struggling nation.

The United Nations General Assembly today, by a recorded vote of 114 in favour to 18 against, with 44 abstentions, adopted a resolution giving Israel and the Palestinians three months to undertake “independent, credible investigations” into serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed during the conflict in Gaza that broke in late December 2008.

During the special meeting convened by the General Assembly today to weigh the report of the Human Rights Council on the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Arab and Non-Aligned delegations praised the survey, saying it had “unmasked double standards” regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza, while Israel’s envoy said the entire debate was hypocritical and that the report had been “conceived in hate”.

The General Assembly, through elections and appointments, today filled several vacancies to subsidiary organs of the Assembly and other United Nations administrative and budgetary bodies, including the Committee on Conferences and the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU).

Amid calls for a new collective security system in which no country felt the need to rely on nuclear weapons, General Assembly delegates today adopted a consensus resolution reaffirming their strong support for the International Atomic Energy Agency in encouraging the practical application of nuclear energy for peaceful uses.