General Assembly

The United Nations peacebuilding architecture was bolstering its ability to help post-conflict nations avoid the all-too-common fate of relapsing into violence after the departure of peacekeeping missions, Peter Wittig (Germany), outgoing Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission, said today.

“As we enter a new year, I am very concerned at the lack of progress towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) expressed worries today over the escalation of violence and mayhem in Côte d’Ivoire resulting from Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after losing that West African nation’s November presidential election to Alassane Ouattara.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People adopted on 14 January the following statement on Israel’s illegal settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem:

The Secretary-General of the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries today praised those nations for showing “their ownership and leadership” in submitting a comprehensive, ambitious and forward-looking draft programme of action to be adopted at the May event.

Amid widespread concern that more of the world’s poorest nations had not graduated to the next stage of socio-economic development in the last 10 years, officials from developing countries pressed today for the fulfilment of development assistance pledges, reform of trade policies and the transfer of technology, while urging the United Nations to help devise specially tailored strategies to help ease the transition to prosperity.

The upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, which would determine the development paradigm for years to come, must come up with concrete ways to achieve sustainable economic prosperity in those 48 nations and improve the lot of their millions of poor people, the Secretary-General of the Conference said at the opening session of its Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting.

The Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child today elected nine members to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The Preparatory Committee for the upcoming Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries held an organizational session today to assess preparations thus far for the event and to encourage delegates to give their input on the structure and themes of the Conference’s eventual outcome document.

Despite a mood of pessimism among Palestinians and Israelis alike, the coming year should be the one in which a just and lasting peace would finally be achieved in the Middle East, in line with United Nations resolutions, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.