General Assembly

The past weeks have been a busy and exciting time featuring a number of historic events, General Assembly President Vuk Jeremić (Serbia) said today as he reviewed recent meetings and forecast the schedule for the coming months.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in collaboration with and at the invitation of the Government of Venezuela, will convene a special meeting at the historic Yellow House in Caracas on 17-18 April 2013. In parallel, the Government of Venezuela will be inaugurating a Palestinian cultural week.

Amid growing tensions, it was a “critical time” for Member States to put pressure on Israel to comply with international law in order to “open the door” to a meaningful political process that would lead to a two-State solution, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People this morning.

The Disarmament Commission was a unique forum where delegates could “think and debate” and — after years of stalemate — there was now a need to build on positive momentum and find convergence on critical issues, speakers said today as they wrapped up the general debate of their substantive session and moved into focused working groups to tackle the most pressing items on their agenda.

The Special Committee on Decolonization — also known as the Special Committee of 24 — today decided to hold its Pacific Regional Seminar in Guayaquil, Ecuador, from 28 to 30 May 2013, to review progress in the United Nations decolonization process.

In a “very complex” security environment — marked by diplomatic divisions between national and international interests, slow progress on nuclear disarmament, and the “relentless” expansion of military budgets — the Disarmament Commission’s record would be judged less by the volume of its words than the quality of its outcomes, said Angela Kane, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, as she opened the deliberative body’s 2013 substantive session.

After two weeks of closed-door consultations, a sweeping arms trade treaty text setting out principles and rules to regulate the staggering array of weapons that changes hands each year failed to achieve consensus tonight, but several delegations, not willing to return to their countries “empty-handed”, promised to move the draft treaty to the General Assembly for adoption as early as next week.

The Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations today agreed to reconvene in about a month to conclude its 2013 session, based on the recommendation of the body’s Chairperson, who sought more time for delegations to thoroughly consider fresh proposals aimed at breaking a weeks-long deadlock.

Presenting the first ever documentary on Yasser Arafat at the United Nations today, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People paid homage to the late leader, whom members said fought unceasingly for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

Member States have completed a first round of discussions aimed at articulating a set of new set of sustainable development goals that will shape the United Nations development agenda. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a two-day inaugural meeting of the new General Assembly working group tasked with proposing new universal sustainable development goals that should build on the success of the Millennium Development Goals while inspiring and galvanizing action.