The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today rejected a draft decision that would have had the Secretary-General withdraw his bulletin laying out the United Nations current rules for the personal status of staff members used to determine their benefits and entitlements.
Underscoring the seriousness and urgency of the situation in South Sudan, the Security Council today called on all parties to armed conflict to issue clear orders prohibiting all violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses without further delay.
Reaffirming its strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen, the Security Council today, in an emergency meeting, condemned the ongoing unilateral actions taken by the Houthis that were undermining the political transition process and jeopardizing the country’s security and stability.
Almost 50 years after the proclamation of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, too many individuals, communities and societies continued to suffer from the injustices and stigma brought by racism, the General Assembly heard today during a special meeting to commemorate the day.
The Commission on the Status of Women had a revitalized role to play in ensuring the 2030 “expiry date” for gender inequality across the world, as laid out in the Political Declaration adopted last week, said the United Nations top gender official at the closing of its fifty-ninth session today.
The Security Council today expressed deep concern at recent incidents across the Blue Line and in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) area of operations, underlining that such events could lead to a new conflict that “none of the parties — or the region — can afford” and urging all parties to abide “scrupulously” by their obligation to respect the Force’s safety.
After 15 years of international efforts, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had emerged from civil war into a unified country, with a clear, shared and celebrated identity, and free of much of the terror of armed groups, the United Nations most senior official in that country told the Security Council today in a message laced with caution that the overall security situation was not still stable, let alone irreversible.
Like the Millennium Development Goals, progress on gender mainstreaming remained uneven across a landscape of United Nations functional commissions and work remained to be done to galvanize meaningful change in the post-2015 era, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today during interactive discussions on the penultimate day of its two-week annual session.
After months of political deadlock, Haiti’s holding of free, transparent and inclusive elections this year in “an atmosphere of calm” was an essential condition for achieving stability, democratic governance and development, the top United Nations official there told the Security Council today, as delegates debated plans to reduce the United Nations peacekeeping presence in the Caribbean nation.
SENDAI, JAPAN, 18 March — Death and destruction from earthquakes, extreme weather and other hazards around the world would be decreased significantly by 2030 according to goals set today by countries meeting at the Third World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction, which closed this evening in Sendai, Japan.
