Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the informal plenary meeting of the General Assembly on human security, in New York today:
As the Sixth Committee (Legal) continued its consideration of the International Law Commission’s draft articles on “Crimes against humanity”, today’s debate demonstrated the complexity of harmonizing varying domestic legal frameworks, with speakers calling for clarifications of provisions that would govern jurisdiction, extradition and mutual legal assistance in a future convention aiming to prevent and punish such crimes.
The General Assembly today adopted a resolution on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict, amid concerns over certain States’ efforts to block updates to the text.
The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:
In Haiti, the United Nations and its partners continue to provide emergency assistance to people impacted by the crisis in Port-au-Prince. Yesterday, the World Food Programme (WFP) supplied more than 30,000 hot meals to displaced people in the capital.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Ana Peyró Llopis of Spain as Acting Special Adviser and Head of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (UNITAD). UNITAD was established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2379 (2017) to support domestic efforts to hold ISIL (Da’esh) accountable by collecting, preserving, and storing evidence in Iraq of acts that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the terrorist group ISIL (Da’esh) in Iraq.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, following consultation with the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, announced today the appointment of Astrid Schomaker of Germany as the Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres flew from Cairo to Jordan on Sunday, 24 March. He arrived in Amman in the evening.
As the Sixth Committee (Legal) met today to continue its consideration of the International Law Commission’s draft articles on “Crimes against humanity”, many delegates pointed to a gap in the existing international legal framework even as others differed on whether the articles are ready to be elaborated into a global agreement to bridge it.
In a meeting urgently convened today following reports of Israeli attacks on Iran’s diplomatic premises in Syria, a senior United Nations official told the Security Council that the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected and further escalation must be avoided.
