Meetings Coverage

Citing an increasingly interdependent world in which the three pillars of the United Nations - peace and security, development and human rights – continued to converge in complex ways, General Assembly delegates today called for greater equity between developed and developing countries in matters ranging from multilateral decision-making to sustainable development policy, as they considered the Secretary-General’s annual report on the work of the United Nations system.

As the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) met to hear petitioners on its annual draft of decolonization issues, many decried the violation of the human rights of Western Saharan refugees, including what some claimed was the exploitation of their natural resources by Morocco.

The international community must not lose sight of the emerging and interconnected threats of food insecurity and climate change, Cambodia’s representative warned delegates today, as the Second Committee continued its general debate.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took up the scale of assessments for determining Member States’ contributions for the Organization’s 2013-2015 peacekeeping operations budget, with speakers strongly cautioning against any changes to the methodology that would place extra financial burdens on small developing countries and did not reflect the “special responsibility” of permanent Security Council members to maintain international peace and security.

As the target date for the Millennium Development Goals approaches, no challenge was more daunting than the continuing rise in inequality and its impact on vulnerable groups, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Wu Hongbo told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today as it opened its annual session with a debate on social development.

Despite laudable progress in lowering its overall vacancy rate to 11 per cent and streamlining and strengthening work processes, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) still had work to do to improve its capacity to analyse risks and investigate complex financial and procurement cases, speakers said today as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) discussed programme monitoring and reviewed the efficiency of United Nations administrative and financial functioning.

As the Sixth Committee (Legal) began consideration of measures to eliminate international terrorism, delegates, while condemning the association of terrorism with any specific religious, cultural or ethnic grouping, called for increased international cooperation to — once and for all — define terrorism and conclude a convention on the topic.

An effective centralized State was needed to ensure the existence of an inclusive economic structure, delegates in the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) heard today as they opened the first general debate of the sixty-seventh General Assembly session.

Progress on Palestinian status at the United Nations would generate a “new dynamic in the peace process” and help safeguard the two-State solution, stressed the Palestinian Rights Committee this morning as it adopted its latest report and heard a briefing on plans to present a resolution to the General Assembly on the matter in the coming months.

Absent global consensus on a new security architecture for disarmament, regional groups and individual countries opened debate in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today with statements both affirming the global political stasis and strategic uncertainty while putting forth ideas on how to correct their course.