Meetings Coverage

In a call to action, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues approved a draft decision today recommending that the Economic and Social Council rename it as the “Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, at the close of a two-week session marked by a dynamic effort to preserve those peoples’ identity, ensure their rights and secure a fully fledged place on the global stage.

States Parties to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families today elected by secret ballot seven members to the Committee that monitors the treaty’s implementation, to replace those whose four-year terms will expire on 31 December.

The international community’s attention to indigenous peoples appears to be waning, and, after 12 years of existence, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues might be experiencing “fatigue”, the expert body heard today as it wrapped up its substantive work on the penultimate day of its twelfth session.

A United Nations expert panel on tax matters launched today at Headquarters a manual intended to help developing countries expand fiscal stability and tax revenues by more accurately gauging the way in which multinational corporations set the prices for goods traded between corporate subsidiaries.

The Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, while taking note of seven quadrennial reports and approving its provisional agenda for 2014, recommended suspensions, withdrawals and name changes of accredited organizations.

Including indigenous peoples in shaping the post-2015 development agenda and in closing persistent gaps in the current scheme was crucial, so that when the time came, the global community could “hit the ground running”, the Permanent Forum heard today during a panel discussion in which top United Nations policy advisers sketched plans for the much-anticipated follow-on proposal.

As it considered the situation in the Central African subregion today, the Security Council reiterated its strong condemnation of the attacks and atrocities, as well as violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of human rights, being perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army, and called for an immediate end to the violence.

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) until 30 November, deciding further to increase the 4,200-strong troop presence in the contested border town to 5,326 peacekeepers, as requested by Sudan and South Sudan on 8 March, through the Joint Political and Security Mechanism.

A senior Secretariat official asked the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today to meet the start-up requirements of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) by approving $454.43 million in financing for the 25 April to 31 December 2013 period.

For the third time in its history, and the second time in its current session, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations recommended special consultative status to a gay civil society group, as it continued to put under scrutiny the dozens of applications before it — approving special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council for four organizations and deferring action on 48 applications.