Meetings Coverage

While artificial intelligence (AI) and other innovations hold endless promise for driving prosperity and growth, the international community must urgently address the critical and widening digital gap between developed and developing countries, senior United Nations officials and Member States told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today as it took up information and communications technologies (ICTs) for sustainable development as well as globalization and interdependence.

The Security Council today authorized the renewal for one year the sanctions regime on Haiti, continuing a travel ban and asset freeze, and expanding the scope of an arms embargo as well as the designation criteria for those measures initially established in October 2022 and later renewed in October 2023 to quell rampant gang violence and restore security in the crisis-torn nation.

Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today welcomed the imminent inauguration of the newly renovated historic Africa Hall at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa as well as progress on renovations at the North Building at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), expected to be the first net-zero emissions building in the United Nations system.

The present era is witnessing an unprecedented threat to peace, accompanied by a weakening and, in some instances, a loss of the very concept of peace itself, the Holy See’s delegate told the First Committee, which concluded its general debate today.

As myriad global crises spark alarming levels of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, unprecedented investments are needed to reverse this trend so as to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), speakers told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) as it took up poverty eradication, agriculture development, food security and nutrition.

Concluding its general debate on decolonization, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) today approved 22 draft resolutions, one decision and an amendment, with many delegates voicing concern over the procedural aspects and language of one of the resolutions.

Along with visits from the President of the General Assembly and the Deputy Secretary-General, Sixth Committee delegates took up the Secretary-General’s report, “Strengthening and Coordinating Rule of Law Activities” today, as speakers discussed the rule of law at the national and international levels, with some underscoring the importance of equal participation and access to justice and others offering national best practices in tackling corruption and ensuring transparency.

Special Rapporteurs — United Nations-appointed independent experts — presented their reports on internal displacement, human trafficking, modern slavery, the promotion of the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and the protection of human rights defenders, as the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) continued its interactive dialogues today.

Urgent action is needed to address the abject conditions and intolerable suffering in Gaza, a senior humanitarian UN official told the Security Council today, as delegates expressed horror at the recent strike on a hospital that killed displaced persons sheltering there, amidst Israel’s intensifying operations in northern Gaza.

There has not been a single moment in the past year when the Palestinians have not felt a “terrible pain that rips our heart because of the massacres and the destruction by the Israeli war machine,” said the representative of the State of Palestine, as the general debate in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) continued.