Plenary

Deploring conflicts in Syria and elsewhere, world leaders highlighted the complementary relationship between peace and development today as the General Assembly entered the second day of its annual general debate.

In a wide-ranging call to action delivered as he opened the General Assembly’s annual debate, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon today urged world leaders to shoulder their responsibilities on peace and security, human rights, arms proliferation and sustainable development, calling for increased global commitment to the United Nations system and the principles on which the Organization was founded.

World leaders will gather at the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on Disability and Development on 23 September to consider and adopt a resolution that calls for disability-inclusive development that affords persons with disabilities opportunities for full and productive employment and decent work, as well as access to basic social services.

As the General Assembly adopted a landmark outcome document aimed at promoting disability-inclusive development, during its first-ever high-level meeting on that topic, its President underlined the text’s significance as the instrument to guide efforts towards the creation of a fully inclusive society through 2015 and beyond.

Acting on the recommendations of its General Committee, the General Assembly today adopted the work programme and agenda for its sixty-eighth session, which contained 173 items, and endorsed the recommendation that its general debate, to be held from 24 September to 1 October, would continue on Saturday, 28 September.

Calling for increased cooperation among Member States, the incoming President of the General Assembly said today that the upcoming year would be pivotal for the 193-nation organ as it sought to identify the parameters of the post-2015 development agenda.

The General Assembly concluded its sixty-seventh session today, capping a year characterized by a mix of breakthroughs and failures, with the adoption of the first-ever global arms trade treaty prominent among the former, and inaction on the Syrian tragedy among the latter.

Reform of the international financial system should include reducing its overreliance on credit rating agencies and increasing competition among them, speakers said today, as the General Assembly held its first ever thematic debate on the role of those institutions as arbiters of creditworthiness.

Education was a primary tool for building a culture of peace, and the United Nations had rightly placed it at the forefront to that end, speakers said today as the General Assembly held a high-level forum on that topic.

Hailing Kazakhstan’s steps to outlaw nuclear weapons testing and advance global nuclear disarmament, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Vuk Jeremić (Serbia) today urged all Member States that had not yet done so to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.