General Assembly

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 13 October:

Following the historic submission on 23 September of the application of Palestine for admission to membership in the United Nations, it was time for the natural, historic and legal right of the Palestinians to join the community of nations to be granted, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today.

To halt all nuclear testing, the international community must aim to launch the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 2012 through political will and concrete action, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged today at the seventh so-called “Article XIV” Conference to facilitate the instrument’s operation.

Haniff Hussein, Permanent Representative of Malaysia to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) on 22 June 2010.

Jarmo Viinanen, Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) on 22 June 2010.

Hernán Salinas Burgos, Director of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, was elected Chair of the Sixth Committee (Legal) on 22 June 2011.

Abulkalam Abdul Momen, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) on 22 June 2011.

The General Assembly’s incoming President, in his first Headquarters press conference this afternoon, said the sixty-sixth session would focus on the priority theme of mediation.

Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser was elected President of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly on 22 June 2011. A veteran diplomat, Mr. Al-Nasser has contributed to advancing the multilateral agenda in the realms of peace and security, sustainable development and South-South cooperation over a career spanning nearly four decades.

“Achieving the realization of the rights of persons with disabilities is more than possible, it is within reach and it is a necessity,” the Chair of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities declared today. As the Conference concluded its three-day fourth session, Chair Mårten Grunditz of Sweden emphasized that all the world’s people would “lose out” if the rights of persons with disabilities were not realized.