General Assembly

The human rights situation in Myanmar remained alarming, with a pattern of widespread and systematic violations that prevailing impunity allowed to continue, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said today.

“There isn’t an internationally recognized right that some company somewhere hasn’t violated,” John Ruggie, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, said today during a Headquarters press conference.

During a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, Angela Kane, Under-Secretary-General for Management, and United Nations Controller, Jun Yamazaki, presented a mixed picture as they outlined the Organization’s financial health, its proposed budget, and recent reform and management initiatives.

The time had come to adopt a United Nations convention on rights of detainees, Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, told correspondents at Headquarters today. “In so many countries”, he said, “States are not living up to their obligations to respect the basic dignity of human beings in detention.”

The adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples two years ago signalled the “strong commitment” of the international community to remedy historical ills and combat the ongoing denial of rights, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press conference today.

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs will kick off a three-part series of special events on climate change, beginning tomorrow, 13 October, with a focus on the state of the climate change negotiations, followed in the two succeeding weeks by events on the impacts and threats of climate change, and the opportunities for “green” growth.

This statement was issued today by the bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on the situation in occupied East Jerusalem:

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, today, adopted its annual draft report, urging Israel and the Palestinians to resume the permanent status talks.

General Assembly President Ali Abdussalam Treki of Libya, in his first press conference since the close of the Assembly’s annual general debate earlier this week, said this year’s gathering, had drawn more than 100 world leaders who had demonstrated their sustained interest in the United Nations and a wide array of crucial issues ‑‑ from climate change to the financial crisis to human rights.

A diplomatic strategy by countries supporting the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was urgently needed to persuade and pressure the nine remaining States required to ratify the treaty so it could enter into force, Jessica Matthews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said at Headquarters today.