Meetings Coverage

While the international community had recently intensified efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the top United Nations political official today warned the Security Council that the situation on the ground “remains fragile and a crisis of confidence between the parties has so far prevented the resumption of talks”. “We cannot afford to lose this opportunity to reach an agreement,” said B. Lynn Pascoe, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, as he briefed the Council.

While mortality had declined and life expectancy had risen across the world -- trends underpinned by a shift in the “disease burden” from communicable to non-communicable diseases -- the HIV pandemic had halted progress and, in some regions, reversed it, health experts told the Commission on Population and Development today, as it continued its general debate.

The United Nations should develop a template to better educate everyone from schoolchildren to judges worldwide about criminal justice concepts, standards and the rule of law in order to create a safer, more just world, delegates said as the Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice continued in Salvador, Brazil, today.

While advances in information technology held many benefits for society, its dark underside ‑‑ computer-based fraud and forgery, illegal interception of private communications, interference with data and misuse of electronic devices ‑‑ required States to develop an organized, international response, delegates said today at the Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

The sustainability of the peace process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo would depend on the success of the efforts to stimulate recovery and reconstruction and to ensure the effective presence and authority of the State, as well as consolidation of democratic structures, the Head of the United Nations Mission in that country told the Security Council today.

People around the world were dying because their needs went unmet by health systems that were fragmented, broken and struggling, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it continued its general debate on national experiences related to health, morbidity, mortality and development.

Members of the General Assembly committee negotiating a comprehensive anti-terrorism convention expressed hope this morning that remaining obstacles to completing the long-stalled draft text could be overcome during the Committee’s fourteenth session, which opened today.

While life expectancy had risen in all regions over the past 50 years -- one major achievement of the last century -- health improvements and medical advances were not reaching huge swaths of the developing world, mandating the global community to work harder to ensure that people did not die of preventable disease, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it opened its forty-third session under the theme of “Health, morbidity, mortality and development”.

The Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice opened this morning in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, with a fervent call by United Nations and Government officials for stronger global cooperation among all stakeholders, as well as stronger legal tools to stamp out organized crime.

Plans were on track for an Iraqi mechanism to replace the fund that funnels the country’s export revenues towards development needs and international obligations, the United Nations Controller told the Security Council this morning.