Meetings Coverage

With the scourge of violence against women and girls still rampant around the world, the international community must “rise to the occasion” and lay out concrete plans to tackle that long-standing, deeply entrenched crisis, stressed high-level speakers as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its historic fifty-seventh session today.

Concern over reimbursement rates for peacekeeping troop contributors, the cost of staff air travel, implementation of the staff mobility initiative, and the report of the Joint Inspection Unit dominated the debate of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today, as it opened its resumed session.

ROME, 28 February — A robust, financially stable Palestinian Authority was vital to ensuring enhanced international engagement, a viable Palestinian economy and sustainable human development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speakers said this afternoon as the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People wrapped up its work.

ROME, 28 February — As the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People continued today, experts highlighted the complex challenges of developing a self-sustaining economy under occupation and outlined programmes aimed at rebuilding the severely eroded Palestinian agriculture sector, ensuring high governance standards and generating donor support for reconstruction of Gaza.

Convening in a brief organizational session this afternoon, the Economic and Social Council decided on the division of responsibilities among its President, Néstor Osorio (Colombia), and four of its Vice-Presidents to Chair the various segments of its 2013 substantive session, to be held in July.

ROME, 27 February — With cash-starved Palestinian institutions standing on “political quicksand”, and mounting tensions in the West Bank over settlement construction and the recent death of a Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the parties to refrain from actions that could undermine the prospects of reopening long-stalled peace negotiations.

Adopting its 2013 draft report, the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on Strengthening the Role of the Organization concluded its regular session today, forwarding its recommendations to the General Assembly.

ROME, 27 February — The situations that triggered humanitarian strife in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — severe restrictions on movement and constraints on livelihoods — were man-made: the consequence of Israel’s occupation, experts said today as the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People held its first plenary session.

It was a moment of “heightened risks across multiple fronts” in the Middle East, the United Nations political chief told the Security Council today, saying it was time to end the conflict and the occupation that had scarred the lives of far too many Israelis and Palestinians for far too long, as well as reverse the destructive military spiral in Syria that “churns more forcefully each day and threatens to pull its neighbours, most notably, Lebanon, into its vortex”.

In a brief plenary meeting today, the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization elected Marcel Van den Bogaard ( Netherlands), from the Western European States Group, as Vice-President of its 2013 session, concluding the election of its bureau members.