General Assembly

Ochir Enkhtsetseg, Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) on 11 June 2010.

Joseph Deiss of Switzerland was elected President of the sixty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly on 11 June 2010.

The incoming President of the General Assembly, in his first Headquarters press conference this afternoon, expressed hope that the sixty-fifth session would reaffirm the central place of the United Nations in global governance. “All the big topics that concern our planet have to be discussed in the General Assembly,” Joseph Deiss of Switzerland said following his opening of the sixty-fifth session in the Assembly Hall.

Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala was elected Chair of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) on 11 June 2010.

Welcoming the General Assembly’s accomplishments over the past 12 months – especially the spirit of consensus shown by Member States on issues ranging from achievement of the Millennium Development Goals to ensuring long-term support for disaster-struck Haiti and Pakistan — Ali Abdussalam Treki, the 192-member body’s outgoing President, today said there was nevertheless “room for improvement,” especially to strengthen it’s working methods and reassert its authority on the international stage.

The Meeting of States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights this morning re-elected six members and elected three new members to its monitoring body, the Human Rights Committee.

Equal access to education — with accommodating teachers, understanding students and a supportive administration — coupled with respect for the right of disabled persons to choose where and with whom they lived were vital elements for realizing the full spectrum of human rights, the third Conference of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was told today, in two round table discussions concerning those issues.

The third Conference of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities opened today amid calls to equally include disabled persons in community life, health and education systems, and to effectively fill planning and execution gaps in Government strategies that often fell short of addressing their needs, especially in times of conflict or natural disaster.

This statement was issued today by the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on the resumption of permanent status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians:

The Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations informed the Palestinian Rights Committee this morning that the Middle East Quartet had just minutes earlier released a statement inviting the Israeli and Palestinian sides to begin direct negotiations in Washington, D.C., on 2 September, aiming towards an agreement in one year.