Meetings Coverage

States could not expect to attain the goals of peace, development and respect for human rights without supporting a robust international criminal justice system, which gave a much-needed voice to the victims of the world’s most serious crimes and held to account the elusive perpetrators, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today during the General Assembly’s first-ever high-level thematic debate on the role of global judicial bodies in fostering rapprochement.

ISTANBUL, 10 April — Civil society must have a say in how to sustainably manage the world’s forests, and activities involving woodlands must not threaten those whose livelihoods depended on those vital global resources, representatives of major groups said today as the United Nations Forum on Forests continued its tenth session today.

ISTANBUL, 9 April — Forestry and woodland management were critical to tackling a number of key sustainable development challenges and the most effective way to integrate related issues into the post-2015 international development agenda would be to create a cross-cutting goal on natural resources, the United Nations Forum on Forests heard today as it continued the Ministerial Segment of its tenth session.

ISTANBUL, 8 April — As the United Nations Forum on Forests opened its two-week session in Istanbul this morning, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan implored the developed world to end unbridled, irresponsible growth and commit to sustainably manage the world’s forests before it was too late.

The time was “propitious” for the General Assembly committee charged with negotiating a comprehensive anti-terrorism convention to take the necessary decisions, especially on the outstanding issues that had — for years — hampered substantive progress on such an instrument, said its long-time Chairman, as he opened the sixteenth session today.

Amid growing tensions, it was a “critical time” for Member States to put pressure on Israel to comply with international law in order to “open the door” to a meaningful political process that would lead to a two-State solution, Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People this morning.

While welcoming the announcement by Mali’s interim Government that it would organize presidential elections by the end of July 2013, the United Nations top political official told the Security Council today that nearly one year after a military coup threw the country into turmoil, “concerted, broad-based” measures were needed to tackle its serious and closely linked challenges.

The Disarmament Commission was a unique forum where delegates could “think and debate” and — after years of stalemate — there was now a need to build on positive momentum and find convergence on critical issues, speakers said today as they wrapped up the general debate of their substantive session and moved into focused working groups to tackle the most pressing items on their agenda.

To a burst of sustained applause, the General Assembly today voted overwhelmingly in favour of a “historic”, first-ever treaty to regulate the astonishing number of conventional weapons traded each year, making it more difficult for them to be diverted into the hands of those intent on sowing the seeds of war and conflict.

In a “very complex” security environment — marked by diplomatic divisions between national and international interests, slow progress on nuclear disarmament, and the “relentless” expansion of military budgets — the Disarmament Commission’s record would be judged less by the volume of its words than the quality of its outcomes, said Angela Kane, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, as she opened the deliberative body’s 2013 substantive session.