Plenary

The General Assembly held a by-election today to replace a vacant seat in the Human Rights Council, the United Nations body responsible for promoting and protecting all human rights around the globe.

Amid growing criticism of inaction by the Security Council on the war in Ukraine, the General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution today aimed at holding the five permanent Council members accountable for their use of veto.

The General Assembly today adopted four texts, including a resolution approved by the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) that provides about $2.23 million in funding, known as revised estimates, for actions taken by the Human Rights Council during its thirty-third special session last year.

In a consensus text adopted today, the General Assembly welcomed the upcoming World Cup football championship in Qatar as the first such event to be held in the Middle East and encouraged the relevant authorities to exert every effort to ensure that the 2022 tournament will leave a lasting legacy for peace and development in the region.

Continuing its emergency special session today, the General Assembly took the extraordinary step of adopting a resolution that suspended the Russian Federation’s membership in the Human Rights Council, doing so in the wake of recently revealed images and testimonies of atrocities perpetrated against the civilian population of Ukraine.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the General Assembly event marking the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, in New York today:

Continuing its emergency special session today, the General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing that the Russian Federation’s military offensive inside Ukraine — and its humanitarian consequences — are on a scale that the international community has not seen in Europe in many decades.

The General Assembly resumed its emergency special session today to discuss two competing draft resolutions on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine — one that implicates the Russian Federation’s military offensive in the unfolding humanitarian crisis and the other that makes no mention of Moscow’s aggression against its neighbour.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated rising, pervasive and deeply rooted systemic racism around the world that must be dismantled and exorcised — including through reparations — speakers said today as the General Assembly commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, observed annually on 21 March, date of the 1960 massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa.