Meetings Coverage

With efforts under way in Burundi to ensure transparent elections in 2010, entrench democratic principles into national institutions and advance a pivotal ceasefire accord with Forces Nationales de Libération (FNL) rebels, the country was successfully emerging from years of conflict, the Peacebuilding Commission heard today, as it adopted the conclusions of its third biannual review of the implementation of the Strategic Framework for Peacebuilding in Burundi.

Once fully deployed, the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) would be sure to make a difference, the top United Nations official on the ground told the Security Council today.

Concluding the General Assembly’s debate on States’ responsibility to protect their people from mass-atrocity crimes, delegates today weighed whether that multifaceted and controversial concept provided sufficient legal grounds for collective intervention in national affairs.

The head of the United Department of Public Information today opened the seventeenth International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East, urging Israelis, Palestinians and the wider international community, particularly journalists, to support the world body’s ongoing efforts to help the parties arrive at a just and lasting solution.

Taking up the situation in the Middle East, speakers in today’s Security Council debate welcomed the new international push to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although concern over the lack of movement since the adoption of resolution 1860 (2009) more than six months ago prompted some to call for more decisive Council action.

While praising Switzerland as a leader in human rights policy, experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed concern over the difficulties of instituting country-wide policies for women’s equality given the federal system that gives great autonomy to its districts, which are known as cantons and communes.

Five years after the Security Council had placed the situation in Sudan’s war‑ravaged western Darfur region on its agenda, the top United Nations peacekeeping official today expressed his deep frustration that everyone -- the Government, the rebel movements and the international community –- had failed to muster the political will to address the crisis “in all its heart-wrenching complexity”.

Azerbaijan has instituted a wide array of initiatives for gender equality in a short period, despite recent conflict, experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women said today, while at the same time expressing concern over trafficking in persons, the low percentage of women in decision-making positions and other issues.

The General Assembly debate on protecting civilians from the most serious atrocities continued today as delegates wrestled with the extent to which States should step in to stop -– and ultimately prevent -- genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

As delegates from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic shed light today on recent legislation and programmes to improve the lot of women in their country, they faced criticism from the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women over Government policies to address rape and domestic violence.