General Assembly

By raising the voices of persons with disabilities to the highest levels of Government and decision-making, their participation in political and public life — a critical human right in itself — also formed the bedrock for many other rights, participants in the Fourth Conference of States Parties to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said today.

In the past year, the General Assembly had made important contributions to the mobilization of support for the Millennium Development Goals, the green economy and sustainable development, as well as the role of the United Nations in global governance, Joseph Deiss (Switzerland), outgoing Assembly President, said at his final Headquarters press conference today.

Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro today urged delegates from Governments and civil society to build on the early success of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by promoting the issue beyond the walls of the United Nations and telling the world that disabled people could make enormous contributions to progress.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People adopted the following statement today, 19 August:

While many Governments were actively pursuing reforms to dismantle legal barriers holding back women’s empowerment, millions of women still faced an uphill battle in the struggle to undo negative stereotypes, lock down property rights and successfully confront sexual harassment in the workplace, the Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women said today.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women concluded its work today by adopting observations and recommendations arising from its consideration of eight country reports that it took up during its forty-ninth session.

The Palestinian people had completed their two-year state-building programme, fulfilling a substantial part of their “contract” with the United Nations, and it was now time for the international community to uphold its end of the deal so that they would see the Organization admit their viable and independent State during the General Assembly’s sixty-sixth session, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer for Palestine, told the Palestinian Rights Committee today.

Condemning Friday’s bombing in Oslo and the shooting massacre at a Norwegian summer camp, delegates and youth advocates said today that this week’s General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Youth would aim to end such extremist behaviour and guide young people on a path of tolerance and understanding. “We are here to prevent what happened in Norway in the future,” Jean-Francis Zinsou (Benin), a co-facilitator of the Meeting, said at a Headquarters press conference.

Singapore’s delegation to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women asserted today that gender equality was central to the country’s burgeoning socio-economic growth and responded to the Committee’s concerns over trafficking in persons, reservations to the women’s Convention, reinforced stereotypes and other issues, as it presented its latest periodic report.

Ratification by Djibouti of the international women’s Convention in 1999 had sparked a transformation in Djibouti that had “changed the landscape of the country”, the head of the delegation and Minister of the Promotion of Women and Family Planning of Djibouti said today, as the State party appeared before the monitoring Committee for its first-ever periodic review of implementation.