Meetings Coverage

Forced into early marriage and trafficked into sometimes life-threatening situations, girls around the world suffered some of the most severe forms of gender discrimination and abuse, civil society representatives told the Commission on the Status of Women today, urging that more be done by States and communities to ensure stronger penalties for perpetrators and legal recourse for victims.

There was a need for a paradigm shift in the traditional perception of waste as a costly and unwanted by-product, to one whereby it would be regarded as a resource, panellists told the Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the nineteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development today.

Access to the most basic transport infrastructure was still lacking in many areas around the world, while changes were needed at all levels of society in the management of chemicals, participants said during today’s Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the nineteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Amid the ongoing tragedy of maternal mortality and morbidity, reaching the unreachable must be the goal of strategies to improve maternal health care, while securing the promises of sustainable development required that poor women be “dealt in” to a green economy, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today.

In an unprecedented move today, the United Nations General Assembly suspended Libya’s membership in the Human Rights Council, the Organization’s pre-eminent human rights body, expressing its deep concern about the situation in that country in the wake of Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s violent crackdown on anti-Government protestors.

The Security Council today welcomed the first report of the Ombudsperson charged with aiding in the consideration of requests by individuals and organizations seeking removal from the list created by the Council’s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

The challenges presented by a fragile and uneven global economic recovery continued to threaten progress towards sustainable development, Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, told the Commission on Sustainable Development today at the opening of the week-long Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the Commission’s nineteenth session.

Violence against women remained the most prevalent and pervasive form of human rights violations and its elimination depended on the effective implementation of standards to ensure that its root causes and consequences were pursued at all levels, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today, as it tackled a host of issues related to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment around the world.

Deploring what it called “the gross and systematic violation of human rights” in strife-torn Libya, the Security Council this evening demanded an end to the violence and decided to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court while imposing an arms embargo on the country and a travel ban and assets freeze on the family of Muammar Al-Qadhafi and certain Government officials.