Meetings Coverage

Urging States to fully ensure the right to health, the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on that right called for decriminalizing the provision of information on sexual and reproductive health, the supply and use of all forms of contraception, and abortion today, as the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) began its second week of debate on the promotion and protection of human rights.

The General Assembly today elected 18 members of the Economic and Social Council to serve three-year terms beginning 1 January 2012.

A Nobel Laureate’s pessimistic appraisal of global economic prospects at Headquarters today included a warning that the current emphasis on austerity in policy responses to the world financial crisis was not only failing to solve its underlying causes but might actually amount to “economic suicide”.

It was the “responsibility and privilege” of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations to bring the Organization’s highest ideals to the service of people who, having endured conflict and war, still fought to grasp the promise of peace, security and prosperity, said the new Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hervé Ladsous, addressing the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) for the first time in that capacity.

The recent prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas showed that it was possible with sufficient exercise of political will to overcome long-standing impasses in the Middle East, the United Nations political affairs chief told the Security Council this morning, ahead of a full-day debate on the Middle East that included some 50 speakers.

The International Civil Service Commission’s attempts over the past year to streamline and improve the conditions of service for thousands of United Nations staff worldwide drew the ire of staff union representatives, as well as one of the Organization’s biggest financial contributors during today’s meeting of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary).

Although xenophobic discourse had elevated the anti-immigration agenda in countries around the world, migration remained a common human endeavour and migrants’ rights were human rights, a top United Nations expert on those rights told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today.

Strongly condemning what it called human rights violations by authorities, and abuses by other actors, in Yemen following months of political strife, the Security Council this afternoon demanded that all sides immediately reject violence, and called on them to commit to a peaceful transition of power based on proposals by the major regional organization of the Arabian Gulf.

If the flagship Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament could not agree on a way to break its 15-year-long deadlock, there was a chance that the United Nations would “lose legitimacy in disarmament affairs”, panellists heading the key components of the Organization’s disarmament machinery today warned in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security).

The General Assembly today elected Guatemala, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo to serve as non-permanent members of the Security Council for the next two years; but after nine rounds of voting, the seat allocated to a member from the Eastern European States was not filled, with Azerbaijan and Slovenia trading the leading edge.