Meeting on the heels of yet another thwarted attempt to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and an end to the war in Gaza, the Security Council heard a last time from Tor Wennesland, outgoing Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, who voiced deep frustration over the failure of combined efforts to broker a ceasefire, and urged Council members and Member States to guard against the “unravelling of decades” of hard-fought multilateralism.
Concluding its seventy-ninth session today, the Sixth Committee (Legal) approved, without a vote, 16 draft texts — one of which saw the Committee, in a historic process of informal discussions, able to maintain its tradition of consensus as it launched the process to negotiate an international convention to govern the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.
The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today approved three draft resolutions, two by recorded votes, on entrepreneurship, small island developing States and a new international economic order.
The fifth session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction concluded today at United Nations Headquarters in New York with the adoption of a report.
The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural) concluded its session today by approving seven draft resolutions — including measures aimed at eliminating racism and addressing the world drug problem — bringing the total number of those texts forwarded to the General Assembly for adoption to 49.
“Syria remains in a profound and active state of war and division,” Najat Rochdi, Deputy Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria told the Security Council today, during its monthly briefing on the political and humanitarian situation in the country, as speakers echoed her calls for the protection of civilians, a de-escalation of hostilities and re-engagement in dialogue towards a long-overdue political settlement of the nearly 14 years of war and conflict.
With extreme levels of gang violence continuing to erode state authority in Haiti and no improvement in sight, a senior United Nations official urged Member States to boost their contributions to the acutely under-resourced Multinational Security Support Mission at an open briefing held by the Security Council to discuss a proposal to transform that Support mission — authorized by the 15-member body in 2023 to assist the Haitian National Police — into a UN peacekeeping operation.
The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) approved five draft resolutions addressing the human rights situations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, and forwarded them to the General Assembly for adoption.
Concluding its work for the current session, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) approved five texts today, four of which were draft resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine, which took recorded votes.
With another two vetoes cast this week in the Security Council — one on a cessation of hostilities in Sudan and one on a Gaza ceasefire — the importance of the “veto initiative” is now “even more profound”, the General Assembly heard today.
