General Assembly

The Special Committee on Decolonization will hold its Caribbean Regional Seminar in Quito, Ecuador, from 28 to 30 May.

Concluding its two-week annual session this afternoon, the Committee on Information emphasized that public information and communications should be at the heart of the United Nations’ strategic management, with a “culture of communications and transparency” permeating all levels so the Organization could best promote an informed understanding of its work among people around the world.

The increasing violence across the world against traditional and new media journalists alike undermined the very foundation of democratic societies, good governance, freedom of expression, and the right to receive and impart information and ideas, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said top United Nations officials and journalists today during an observance of the twentieth anniversary of World Press Freedom Day.

Following up on a key issue that emerged at the “Rio+20” Conference last June — how developing countries can obtain clean, environmentally sound technologies to advance sustainable development — the United Nations General Assembly is convening a series of discussions aimed at identifying options that could be employed to establish a mechanism that facilitates the flow of technologies around the world.

ADDIS ABABA, 30 April — As the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine wrapped up its session today,experts urged African Governments to share their negotiating and institution-building tactics, create a continent-wide solidarity movement, and launch a regional peace initiative to help Palestinians remove barriers to statehood.

ADDIS ABABA, 29 April — Welcoming the recent visit by the United States President to the West Bank and Israel and the subsequent resumption of $500 million in United States aid to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this morning said that now was the time for concerted action to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The United Nations’ Department of Public Information must perform a balancing act in expanding multilingual coverage of issues within the existing financial and human resources and finding the right mix of traditional and new media to tackle emerging communication challenges, delegates told the Committee on Information today as it concluded its general debate.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine in Addis Ababa at the United Nations Conference Centre, on 29 and 30 April. The theme of the Meeting is “African solidarity with the Palestinian people for the achievement of its inalienable rights, including the sovereignty and independence of the State of Palestine”.

Through new media, multilingual information platforms, and stronger partnerships with Member States, the Department of Public Information was conveying the United Nations’ message to global audiences in a more cost-effective and coordinated way, its senior communications official told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People met in Caracas, Venezuela, on 17-18 April, and issued the following Declaration: