Meetings Coverage

The United Nations General Assembly today welcomed the European Union’s readiness to facilitate dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo over the province’s unilateral declaration of independence, saying that the process of such talks would itself be a factor for peace, security and stability in the Balkan region.

In one round of balloting today, the General Assembly elected Joan Donoghue of the United States as a member of the International Court of Justice, in an election run independently of, but concurrently with, the Security Council.

Acting on a request by Azerbaijan, the General Assembly decided today to defer to its sixty-fifth session consideration of a draft resolution on “observance of international law and international human rights law in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan”.

In a vote held simultaneously with the General Assembly, the Security Council today elected Joan E. Donoghue of the United States, by secret ballot, to the International Court of Justice to fill the remainder of the term left vacant by the resignation of Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the United States (see documents S/2010/442 and S/2010/443). She will serve until 5 February 2015.

The Economic and Social Council this morning decided that the inaugural election of the 41 members of the Executive Board of the new entity for gender equality would be held “as soon as possible and by early November 2010”.

Reiterating strong and unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, “by whomever […] and for whatever purposes” they were committed, the General Assembly today reaffirmed its support for the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and called on the world body’s Member States and entities, along with other international and regional organizations, to step up implementation of the four-year-old initiative.

Liberia had made “tremendous progress” since the end of its devastating civil war, but would require international assistance to keep making progress in the foreseeable future, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative told the Security Council this morning.

While the primary responsibility for the protection of civilians and for preventing the mass rapes that occurred in August in the Democratic Republic of the Congo lay with the State, failures could be traced to the peacekeeping mission there as well, the head of an investigative mission on the incidents told the Security Council in a briefing this afternoon.

The hard decisions needed to take Nepal’s peace process forward lay firmly in the hands of the Himalayan country’s leaders, and were beyond the mandate and capacity of the United Nations Mission there, known as UNMIN, the Secretary-General’s representative told the Security Council this morning.

By a vote of 50 in favour to 17 against, with 86 abstentions, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution recognizing the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees and their descendants, regardless of ethnicity, to their homes throughout Georgia, including in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.