Realizing the shared vision of “leaving no one behind” of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 is contingent on the international community’s ability to mobilize resources, transfer technology, and forgive debt, delegates told the General Assembly today.
Defending the strategic purposes of their arsenals, First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) delegates representing nuclear‑weapon States pointed at current geopolitical realities, while calling for the type of methodical approach to disarmament that has led to past successes.
Despite insecurity and violent extremism spreading across Mali’s borders, the United Nations peacekeeping chief cited reasons for hope, including Mali’s successful presidential elections, the signing of the new Pact for Peace and a drop in peacekeeper deaths, as he briefed the Security Council today.
With migrant numbers skyrocketing worldwide, speakers emphasized that group’s contribution to development as well as the need to recognize their qualifications, protect their rights and combat illegal trafficking, as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) took up globalization and interdependence today.
The world has been fundamentally reordered by widespread neoliberal economics that has privatized basic public goods — social protections, education, pensions and criminal justice among them — with often disastrous impacts on the human rights of the extremely poor, experts told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today.
Protection of diplomatic and consular representatives — as well as the security and inviolability of diplomatic and consular missions, their archives, documents and communications — is one of the pillars upon which international relations rests, speakers stressed while voicing concern at rising attacks on missions and personnel around the world, as the Sixth Committee (Legal) took up the matter today.
The recent “shocking” case of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is only one of thousands of enforced disappearances and the international community must stand firm in denouncing such crimes, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) heard today as it continued its debate on human rights.
Exchanging views on ways to break a languishing disarmament impasse, including by assuring all non‑nuclear‑weapon States against the use or threat of atomic bombs, delegates of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today began a thematic discussion on nuclear weapons.
Reform efforts currently under way are designed to help the Department of Public Information become more agile in operation and have a greater impact on communications, both within the United Nations and in relation to external stakeholders and the public, the Organization’s head of public information told the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) as it began its consideration of questions relating to information today.
Speakers in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today welcomed a 5.2 per cent reduction in the projected cost of replacing semi‑permanent office blocks at the United Nations Office at Nairobi that date back to the 1970s, but expressed concern that a seismic mitigation retrofit and life‑cycle replacements project at the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) premises in Bangkok is running the risk of going over budget.
