General Assembly

John W. Ashe (Antigua and Barbuda) was elected President of the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly on 14 June 2013, while serving as Permanent Representative to both the United Nations and the World Trade Organization since 2004.

The Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, Palitha T.B. Kohona, was elected Chair of the Sixth Committee (Legal) on 1 October 2013.

Stephan Tafrov (Bulgaria) was elected Chair of the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) on 1 October.

With the goal of injecting new energy into the global effort to implement sustainable development, world leaders will gather at the United Nations today for the inaugural session of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

World leaders gathered at the United Nations today to inaugurate the High-level Political Forum which seeks to inject new energy into global efforts to accelerate action on sustainable development for future generations.

Acknowledging attempts by many of his predecessors to move Security Council reform forward, the new President of the General Assembly said today that he would work for consensus on what that reform should look like.

The Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations concluded its 2013 substantive session today, adopting a procedural report on its work.

The real test of success in the political process between Israel and Palestine would come after the conclusion of negotiations currently taking place in Washington, D.C., the Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine said today, voicing hope that the cynics who believed the current talks would go the way of previous rounds of dialogue would be proved wrong.

Closing the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities today, its President told delegations that the lessons learned over the last three days needed to be taken home and implemented.

Many international development frameworks, including the Millennium Development Goals, overlooked disability, and the post-2015 period must provide equal opportunity for every person, Israel’s Permanent Representative said today as he co-chaired a round table discussion on disability-inclusive development.