Meetings Coverage

Amid growing criticism of inaction by the Security Council on the war in Ukraine, the General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution today aimed at holding the five permanent Council members accountable for their use of veto.

Senior United Nations officials today urged the Security Council not to forget about the dire humanitarian situation in Syria in light of other conflicts, as members discussed the recent conclusion of the seventh session of the Constitutional Committee and diverged over appropriate modalities for providing life-saving aid.

Experts outlined demographic and development-based approaches to “building back better” from the coronavirus pandemic while advancing towards full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as the Commission on Population and Development’s annual session entered its second day today.

Against the backdrop of shifting population demographics, conflicts, post-pandemic economic shocks and climate change, the developing world is on the brink of a “perfect storm” of debt, food and energy crises, experts warned today, as the Commission on Population and Development opened its fifty-fifth session.

The Economic and Social Council opened its annual forum on financing for development follow-up today with speakers warning that a convergence of crises — the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and debt unsustainability — have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, threatening to reverse development gains by a generation.

The explosive growth of extractive operations around the world often plays out on indigenous people’s lands without their consent, causing irreparable harm to their livelihoods, cultures, languages and lives, speakers told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, as it opened its 2022 session amid calls to respect their free, prior and informed consent on the existential decisions uprooting their communities.

The status quo on Jerusalem’s holy sites must be upheld at all costs, speakers told the Security Council today, following the recent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces at Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount during religious holidays.

After three weeks of discussion, the Disarmament Commission concluded its 2022 substantive session today — the first since 2018 — with the approval by consensus of its draft report to the General Assembly as well as the reports of its subsidiary bodies.

With the final status of Abyei still unresolved, an alarming recent flare-up of violence killing civilians and peacekeepers threatens the apparent calm between Sudan and South Sudan, speakers told the Council today, as that body also looked towards a possible future renewal of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) mandate.

With more than half the world’s people living in cities and the fastest population growth projected to take place in urban settings, sustainable development will hinge on how countries manage urbanization, the Economic and Social Council President told delegates today, as he opened the special meeting on the New Urban Agenda amid calls for tackling the deep inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.