Legal

Nearing the conclusion of their work for the sixty-eighth session, delegates in the Sixth Committee (Legal) today took action on two draft resolutions and heard the oral reports by the Chairs of two working groups.

Commending progress and assessing shortcomings, the Sixth Committee (Legal) today took up the Secretary-General’s report on the administration of justice at the United Nations, and considered a request for observer status.

Risk reduction and prevention were crucial to the “protection of persons in the event of disasters”, emphasized speakers in the Sixth Committee (Legal), as deliberations concluded on a broad range of issues from the International Law Commission’s report.

Praising the Sixth Committee for its efforts to ensure justice and respect for international obligations, the President of the General Assembly emphasized that the rule of law must be integrated into other global processes, including the post-2015 development agenda.

The Sixth Committee (Legal) today approved four requests for observer status in the General Assembly and continued its consideration of the second cluster of topics on reservations to treaties in the International Law Commission’s 2011 report.

After almost two decades, the Guide to Practice on “reservations to treaties” finally came before the Sixth Committee (Legal), as the debate began on the “second cluster” of topics from the International Law Commission’s 2011 report.

As they continued deliberations on the International Law Commission’s annual report, Sixth Committee (Legal) delegates tackled an array of issues on the newly drafted conclusions that addressed the interpretation of treaties, and raised questions regarding the Commission’s consideration of crimes against humanity.

Building upon its work over the past year, the International Law Commission had made marked progress through launching many new undertakings, the Sixth Committee (Legal) heard today, as it began its review of the Commission’s annual report.

The future form of the draft articles on transboundary harm from hazardous activities, the draft principles on allocation of loss in the case of such harm, and the draft articles on the law of transboundary aquifers remained in question as the Sixth Committee (Legal) took up those matters today.

Despite the more than 40 years it had taken the International Law Commission to finalize its draft articles on State responsibility for internationally wrongful acts, delegates could still not find consensus on whether to codify them in a convention, as the Sixth (Legal) Committee began deliberations on the matter.