General Assembly

The Committee on Information this afternoon called on the United Nations Department of Public Information to continue to advance, through new technology, multilingualism, partnership, efficiency and local outreach, to better raise awareness of critical international issues.

The Department of Public Information would continue to work with the Government of Angola to soon make the planned United Nations Information Centre in Luanda for Portuguese-speaking African countries a reality, Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, said this afternoon as the Committee on Information concluded the general debate of its thirty-second session.

Equality of languages on the United Nations website and the implications of freedom of information were dominant themes in the Committee on Information this afternoon, as it continued the general debate of its thirty-second session.

It was crucial for the United Nations to get its message out through both the latest technologies, such as Twitter, and more traditional ones, such as radio, the head of the Department of Public Information told the Committee on Information as it opened its annual session this morning.

The wide-ranging efforts of the United Nations to better communicate with the world public will be reviewed in the thirty-second annual session of the Committee on Information, taking place at Headquarters from 26 April to 7 May. During the two-week session, delegations will review the activities of the Department of Public Information and its three subprogrammes -- Strategic Communications, News Services and Outreach Services -– in the period July 2009 to February 2010.

The Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory did not give any indication of change, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today. Riyad Mansour said that Israel continued on the path of violating international law, including international humanitarian law, particularly with regard to the continuation of settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

After three weeks of intensive deliberations, the Disarmament Commission had not succeeded in distinguishing its 2010 session from its previous meetings over the past 11 years, that body’s Chair said today as it concluded its annual substantive session.

Although speakers in the Disarmament Commission continued to stress the urgent need for nuclear disarmament, some speakers during today’s debate, which concluded the formal exchange of views for the session, drew attention to the scourge of small arms and light weapons ‑‑ the equivalent of “weapons of mass destruction” in Africa ‑‑ while others emphasized the need to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.

The General Assembly’s Special Committee on Decolonization approved today the partial composition of its official delegation to attend the 2010 Pacific Regional Seminar -- to be held in Nouméa, New Caledonia, from 18 to 20 May –- and endorsed the list of experts and non-governmental organizations that will be invited to the event.

Pointing to the “fresh and affirmative spirit of multilateralism” emerging in discussions on global disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, Sergio Duarte, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, called on the Disarmament Commission this morning as it opened its 2010 substantive session to reach consensus on creating a nuclear-weapon-free world, a new Disarmament Decade and practical confidence-building measures in the field of conventional arms.