Meetings Coverage

The United Nations Disarmament Commission elected Liseth Ancidey of Venezuela this morning as Chair of its Working Group 3. The election followed consultations within the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States.

Deeply concerned that an estimated 358,000 women had died in 2008 from largely preventable complications relating to pregnancy and childbirth, the Commission on Population and Development concluded its forty-fourth session today by urging all Governments to redouble efforts for the elimination of preventable maternal morbidity and mortality by ensuring universal access to reproductive health, including family planning, by 2015.

While acknowledging the sense of disappointment that the last outstanding issues surrounding a proposed global anti-terrorism convention had yet to be resolved, the Chairman of the General Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee charged with elaborating that treaty today stressed that “good progress has been made over the past few years”, and various recommendations were beginning to coalesce into solid proposals for reaching a conclusion.

Civilian protection initiatives, such as in Libya, would not be comprehensive unless they systematically included “efforts to end sexual violence before it has begun”, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict told the Security Council today. “Even in the ‘tyranny of the emergency’, before hard evidence emerges, and though it may not be obvious what gender has to do with ‘arms embargoes’ or ‘no-fly zones’, we must remember women,” Margot Wallström said.

Higher levels of education, particularly among girls, had a strong correlation to declining fertility and better development outcomes, delegates and experts said today as the Commission on Population and Development continued its forty-fourth session.

In a world where threats could be as sudden and unpredictable as a tsunami or as protracted and unyielding as an oppressive dictatorship, an expanded paradigm of security was needed to encompass the broad range of conditions threatening people’s survival, livelihoods and dignity, United Nations Deputy-Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today, as she opened the General Assembly’s informal thematic debate on human security.

Critical challenges in Côte d’Ivoire following the surrender of recalcitrant former President Laurent Gbagbo — whose greed brought on an utterly unnecessary four-month, post-electoral crisis — included restoration of order, prevention of further human rights abuses, national reconciliation and rebuilding and completion of the peace process, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General told the Security Council this morning.

With more than 50,000 women dying annually from unsafe abortions, especially in Africa and South-Central Asia, Governments everywhere must make greater efforts to ensure that the old-age and widespread practice of abortion was safe, legal and available to all women and girls, today’s keynote speaker told the Commission on Population and Development as it continued its general debate.

Robust investments in family planning services could pay immense dividends in the battle to achieve development targets, delegates and experts said today as the Commission on Population and Development continued the 2011 general debate of its forty-fourth session.

With calls for good governance, transparency, trustworthy legal systems and accountability for crimes ringing out from the Arab world to Africa, Asia and Europe, the rule of law represented the world’s “best hope for building peaceful, prosperous societies”, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly today during an informal thematic debate convened as part of the preparatory process for the high-level meeting on the rule of law planned for 2012.