General Assembly

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.

Progress on Palestinian status at the United Nations would generate a “new dynamic in the peace process” and help safeguard the two-State solution, stressed the Palestinian Rights Committee this morning as it adopted its latest report and heard a briefing on plans to present a resolution to the General Assembly on the matter in the coming months.

Elaborating a harmonized post-2015 sustainable development agenda and developing a consultative mechanism between the General Assembly and global economic institutions would top that body’s priorities during its sixty-seventh annual session, said its President during a Headquarters press conference today.

The rule of law will take centre stage at United Nations Headquarters next week, as Heads of State and Government gather for the first-ever high-level General Assembly meeting on that topic, and for the 2012 Treaty Event to be held under the same theme, experts involved in those initiatives said at a press conference today.