Meetings Coverage

The empowerment of indigenous women as powerful agents of change could only strengthen their communities and nations in the face of environmental and other challenges, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today.

Calls demanding respect for traditional lands, resources, knowledge and cultures rang through the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, with participants from the North Pole to New Zealand pressing Governments to move beyond “paper promises” and uphold their rights.

Senior United Nations officials joined representatives of the world’s indigenous communities and Member States today as the General Assembly marked the tenth anniversary of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and explored ways to further its implementation.

Fearing a rollback of achievements in implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, speakers appealed to Governments to uphold commitments protecting the rights of all indigenous peoples and prevent a reversal of hard-won gains, as the sixteenth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues continued today.

Against a backdrop of spiking extremism, proliferating “fake news” and an increasingly fragmented global media space, the Department of Public Information must continue to disseminate factual, impartial information, in accordance with the United Nations Charter principles of sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of States, speakers stressed today, as the Committee on Public Information continued its annual session.

While the political process in South Sudan was not dead, it would require “significant resuscitation”, the senior United Nations official in that country told the Security Council today, as it considered the recent security, humanitarian and political developments in the world’s youngest nation.

The Department of Public Information was harnessing its multilingual news platforms, worldwide network of information centres and outreach efforts to communicate compelling United Nations stories to a global public increasingly accessing news through tablets and mobile platforms, its Acting Head told the Committee on Information today.

While progress had been made on a range of pressing challenges amid the world’s embrace of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, far more must be done to ensure that indigenous peoples were not left behind, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today, during the opening of its sixteenth session.

Despite progress by a growing number of countries towards striking the balance between growth and respect for the planet, more concrete, holistic and law-based approaches would be needed for the drive to true sustainable development, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs told the General Assembly today.

The Economic and Social Council today adopted a resolution calling on all organizations in the United Nations system to make full use of the United Nations Staff College in Turin, Italy, and welcoming its role as a catalyst for organizational change.