The disarmament machinery is an essential part of the toolkit for putting good ideas into action, building consensus, bridging divisions and doing the hard work required to achieve and maintain a safer world, Australia’s delegate told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security), which today concluded its thematic debate on disarmament machinery and opened its deliberations on outer space.

Concluding their debate on the second cluster of topics from the International Law Commission’s annual report — and beginning discussion of the third — speakers in the Sixth Committee (Legal) today covered a wide variety of issues to which international law applies while also contemplating the sources that may inform such law in an expanding legal universe.

The UN Secretary-General has issued a statement of deep concern over the Israeli Knesset’s adoption Monday of two laws, which if implemented, would likely prevent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“The world is not powerless” in countering the threat posed by the military junta in Myanmar, an independent human rights expert told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, urging States to impose sanctions on the regime and denounce its ‘fraudulent’ election to be held in 2025.

As the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) began its consideration of international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space, delegates underscored the fragility and mystery of that realm, calling for cooperation in preserving its peacefulness and harnessing the potential of space technologies.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks for the high-level segment of the Sixteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16) on Biodiversity, in Cali today:

The following statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres was issued today:

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message for the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance Annual Meeting, in New York today:

All parties must exercise maximum restraint and immediately de-escalate to break the dangerous cycle of retaliation and prevent a full-blown war in the Middle East, speakers told the Security Council today during yet another emergency meeting on the escalating crisis in the region, following Israel’s 25 October air strikes against Iran, which earlier in the month launched missile strikes against Israel.

“It is sad but true that no region around the globe has been spared from crisis or insecurity this year,” the representative of the United States told the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) today in its thematic debate on regional disarmament and security, which was followed by the start of debate on the United Nations disarmament machinery.