General Assembly

A groundbreaking resolution just adopted by the General Assembly on female genital mutilation would equip all States to combat those harmful practices, the representative of Burkina Faso, Der Kogda, announced at a Headquarters press conference today.

A Special Meeting of the States Parties to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea today elected Szymon Uścinowicz of Poland to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, filling the 21-member body’s last seat allotted to the Group of Eastern European States.

In a single round of voting today, the Fourteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child elected nine members to the 18-member committee charged with monitoring implementation of the treaty and its two Optional Protocols.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 6 December:

Opening its 2013 organizational session, the Disarmament Commission today elected its new Chair and decided to hold its 2013 substantive session from 1 to 19 April, which would kick off its next three-year cycle.

Sharing the deep “global frustration” that the two-State solution seemed ever more distant, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today that the cost of the continued stalemate rose with each passing day, serving as the “complex and wrenching backdrop” – historic and present-day – against which the Palestinians had decided to seek non-Member Observer State status in the General Assembly.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will hold a special meeting in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in North Lawn Building Conference Room 4 at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, 29 November 2012, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 32/40 B of 2 December 1977.

The Palestinian Rights Committee today approved by consensus four draft resolutions relating to the question of Palestine, as it considered the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly with regard to the current hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 16 November:

A total of 25 Member States pledged approximately $865 million today, during a Headquarters event in support of United Nations development activities for 2013.