Meetings Coverage

In a Middle East aflame with tensions, from Gaza to the Gulf, resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict remains central to wider peace, the Security Council heard today.

After taking stock of progress towards Security Council reform and looking ahead to future negotiations on that topic, the General Assembly today adopted several texts relating to upcoming reviews and meetings, as well as to its Second Committee (Economic and Financial) and Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization).

Intensified hostilities in Ukraine, the Russian Federation and surrounding maritime corridors are exacting a devastating toll on civilians and imperiling global food security, senior UN officials warned the Security Council today, citing attacks on third-party merchant vessels and a 20 per cent spike in wheat prices since the start of July.

Following fraught deliberations on its reappointment of the standing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for another four-year term, the General Assembly today also adopted several draft texts concerning sustainable development, peace and international law.

The best chapters of the Economic and Social Council are still being written, that organ heard today as Nepal handed over the presidency to Algeria and a vision of a leaner, more substance-oriented Council.

At today’s Security Council open debate on the peaceful settlement of disputes, speakers called for greater use of the UN’s diplomatic toolbox — including mediation, fact-finding and early action under Chapter VI of the world body’s Charter — stressing that diplomacy is the only path forward with Council members leading by example.

Countries and communities, especially in resource-rich Africa, must benefit most from the minerals in their own backyards, speakers affirmed today at a Security Council debate on “Natural resources governance: the foundation of peace, security and prosperity”.

Syria’s political transition has reached an important institutional milestone with the establishment of a People’s Assembly and Constitutional Supreme Court, senior UN officials told the Security Council today, warning that continued insecurity, Israeli military activity and a severely underfunded humanitarian response threaten the country’s delicate progress.

Awash in gang violence, scarred by past foreign interventions and long paralysed politically, Haiti now stands at a crossroads between a return to order and tipping into total chaos, the Security Council heard today, as a range of senior United Nations officials provided their latest updates.

As experts warned that road traffic crashes have become a silent pandemic and called on the international community to build transport systems that put people first, a text in which Governments around the world committed to improve road safety was put to a vote in the General Assembly today.