Meetings Coverage

Recognizing the numerous difficulties faced by survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to encourage relevant United Nations agencies, funds and programmes to provide assistance in the areas of education, medical care, skills training and microcredit programmes aimed at promoting self-sufficiency.

In a bid to boost recovery from the global financial, economic crisis and tackle entrenched policy challenges to long-term growth, trade and sustainable development, the Assembly laid the groundwork for consideration of those issues by unanimously adopting –- out of 38 development-related actions put forward by its Second Committee –- several resolutions and landmark texts on food security, legal rights for the poor, and principles governing humankind’s relationship with the earth.

Welcoming the 1 January establishment of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in the Central African Republic (BINUCA), the Security Council this morning requested the Secretary-General to propose in his next report clear benchmarks to guide its work, while it demanded that the country’s Government and other stakeholders hold credible, timely elections in 2010.

Welcoming the report of the African Union High-level Panel on Darfur, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called today for the continuation of efforts to encourage the Government of the Sudan and rebel movements to make concessions and embrace the consensus being built by United Nations-African Union Chief Mediator Djibril Bassolé.

The Security Council today extended until 31 December 2010 the arrangements for depositing into the Development Fund for Iraq of proceeds from oil and gas export sales. The mandate of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board intended to monitor the Development Fund was also extended.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved a draft that would have the Assembly reaffirm the Organization’s new internal justice system, which became effective on 1 July, and request the Secretary-General to provide information on how justice would be administered to non-staff personnel under the new system -- such as contractors, consultants, daily paid workers, personnel under service contracts and personnel under special service arrangements.

The General Assembly today adopted 56 resolutions and 9 decisions recommended by its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), acting with new-found consensus on several historically contentious texts, including those on the rights of the child, the right to food and the report of the Human Rights Council.

With the United Nations poised to spend $599 million on 27 special political missions in 2010, including two large missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, speakers in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today called for greater accuracy in budget projections, as well as greater clarity on the rationale used to decide the type, size and scope of each mission.

Israel, the Palestinians and a revitalized diplomatic Quartet must do more in concert to avert a backward slide in peace efforts, Robert Serry, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Security Council today.

The Security Council today renewed for 12 months its travel ban on persons deemed to be a threat to the peace in Liberia and readjusted its arms embargo to allow the Liberian Government, as well as the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country, to receive certain military materiel for the same time period.