General Assembly

During a “jam session” of ideas at Headquarters this afternoon, musicians and musical scholars shed light on the role of jazz music in bridging communities and cultures and encouraging tolerance and social change.

The Committee on Information of the United Nations General Assembly, in association with the United Nations Academic Impact and the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, will organize a special event to celebrate the first International Jazz Day on 30 April 2012.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 25 April:

Noting the transformation of the past five years of the Department of Public Information into a modern communications outfit, the Department’s top official this afternoon pledged to address Member States’ requests to bolster specific programmes and offices while calling on Governments to help with that process.

The need to fully institute multilingualism in the Organization’s information services, shore up the network of the United Nations Information Centres and increase the cost-effectiveness of the Department of Public Information were among the priority issues put forth today by delegates, as the Committee on Information continued its general debate this afternoon.

Through the strategic use of resources, digital technologies, social media platforms and enhanced partnerships with United Nations system offices and external media outlets, the Department of Public Information was expanding and improving the way it conveyed the United Nations message worldwide, the Organization’s senior communications official told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

While the Disarmament Commission had achieved the minimum necessary to consider its 2012 session a “relative success”, Chairman Enrique Román-Morey challenged delegates to also ask why — despite huge personal efforts and displays of flexibility — they had failed to achieve the consensus needed to allow them to prepare the ground for discussion of key disarmament matters elsewhere, in negotiating forums.

The thirty-fourth annual session of the Committee on Information, the intergovernmental body charged with reviewing progress in the field of United Nations public information, will take place at Headquarters from 23 April to 4 May.

The Special Committee on Decolonization — also known as the Special Conference of 24 — today decided to hold its Pacific Regional Seminar in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, from 30 May to 1 June this year, to review progress in the United Nations decolonization process.

The Disarmament Commission met briefly this morning and completed the Bureau for its 2012 session with the election of two Vice-Chairs and a Rapporteur.