Meetings Coverage

Discussions for a proposed conference on ridding the Middle East region of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction would be difficult and the path would be long, but the “prize” — the security of the region and the world — would be worth the time and effort, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today.

With Somalia’s nine-year transition complete, upholding its “remarkable” progress, new President, leaner Parliament and calmer security landscape required, now more than ever, urgent and sustained support to ensure further successes following two decades of conflict, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General told the Security Council this morning via a video link from Mogadishu.

The Sixth Committee met this morning to take up five requests for observer status in the work of the General Assembly, of which two had been deferred from the Committee’s sixty-sixth session.

Today’s debate on women’s rights and perspectives was critical for achieving gender equality, a goal that should receive wide support in all corners of the world, General Assembly President Vuc Jeremić told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, pledging his readiness to engage with delegates on all such issues during the sixty-seventh session.

The work of UNCITRAL was essential to upholding the rule of law and could only be realized when States put binding legal texts into action, Hrvoje Sikirić, Chairperson of the Commission’s forty-fifth session, told the Sixth Committee (Legal) as it considered the Commission’s report and concluded its debate on two additional items: criminal accountability of the Organization’s officials and experts on mission; and the administration of justice at the United Nations.

The elimination of the persistent and continued violence against women throughout the world was a core element for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) was told today, at the start of its three-day discussion on the advancement of women.

As the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia approached the completion of their mandates - and the twentieth anniversaries of their inception - it was now up to their smaller, leaner successor body to preserve the “new international culture of accountability” they had created, top officials from the courts said today as they briefed the General Assembly.

As the First Committee today heard from a high-level panel of experts on the progress and impasses of the international disarmament machinery, delegates were told that the world must “put an end to nuclear testing before nuclear testing puts an end to the world”.

As the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia approached the completion of their mandates - and the twentieth anniversaries of their inception - it was now up to their smaller, leaner successor body to preserve the “new international culture of accountability” they had created, top officials from the courts said today as they briefed the General Assembly.