General Assembly

Reports submitted by the Governments of Argentina, Mexico, New Zealand and Uzbekistan on measures taken to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights will be reviewed by the Human Rights Committee at its ninety-eighth session, which will be held in New York at United Nations Headquarters from 8 to 26 March 2010.

The flexibility shown so far in intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform was reason for optimism that the process would go forward, the delegate chairing the process said at Headquarters today.

The United Nations had agreed that 2011-2020 would be the global Decade of Action for Road Safety, a panel of international partners working towards that goal said at a Headquarters press conference today.

The following statement was issued on 24 February by the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in connection with the announcement by the Government of Israel concerning religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today that 2010 would be an important year for the Special Committee on Decolonization because it marked both the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism and the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

United Nations peacekeepers were performing commendably despite the complexity of mandates and the lack of key capabilities, the representative of Bangladesh told the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations today as it concluded its general debate. He said that prevailing mismatches between complex mandates and resources might be overcome through careful study and building up the required capabilities.

With the United Nations peacekeeping architecture stretched and under increasing stress, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had developed an “ambitious, forward-looking” agenda to better enable it to contain violence, protect civilians and help national actors build peace after conflict, the head of the world body’s peacekeeping operations said today as the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations opened its 2010 substantive session.

The United Nations Meeting, having assumed the task of considering the urgency of addressing the permanent status issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did not hesitate to wade into that difficult terrain, managing to produce in the end some fresh ideas, unbound by the constraints of intergovernmental diplomacy.

While some might take issue with the United States’ past actions in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few had any doubt that the country, under President Barack Obama, was committed to being an honest broker, its representative said today as the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace entered its second day.

Issues of borders, settlements, refugees, Jerusalem, and water dominated discussion this afternoon in the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, as experts made compelling cases for why each was the pivotal permanent status issue around which renewed peace negotiations should coalesce.