Concluding its work for the main part of the General Assembly’s seventieth session today, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) approved nine draft resolutions — all by recorded vote — relating to Palestine refugees and Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Today’s violent conflicts, most recently marked by terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and Baghdad, were often rooted in a mix of exclusion, inequality and governance failures, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council today, urging a greater focus on prevention, human rights and coherence among all actors to address problems which, when allowed to fester, led to large-scale atrocity.
Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on World Toilet Day, observed on 19 November:
Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the Security Council open debate on security, development and the root causes of conflicts, in New York today:
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Robert Lawrence Skinner of the United States as Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Washington, D.C.
As the Human Rights Council was moving into its tenth year, its record had testified to a high level of responsiveness while it continued to be actively engaged in cases of urgent and chronic violations, that body’s president told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today while presenting its annual report during an interactive dialogue the preceded a general discussion.
As the international community approached a critical juncture in the five-year-long Syrian crisis, its focus must remain on protecting civilians and ensuring they enjoyed unimpeded access to humanitarian aid, senior United Nations officials emphasized as they briefed the Security Council today.
Challenges to the international community’s human rights mainstay were debated today as the General Assembly took up the reports of the Human Rights Council’s sessions this year. Hearing from just over two dozen speakers expressing fellow feeling with citizens of Paris, Beirut and Baghdad in the wake of devastating terrorist attacks in those cities, delegates discussed the way forward for advancing human rights around the world for every individual.
During a press conference at the G20 Summit in Turkey, the Secretary-General reiterated his profound condolences to the people of France and stressed the need for a robust response to terrorism, within the rule of law and with respect for human rights so as not to “fan the fire we are trying to put out”.
The Security Council requested today that the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals present, by Friday, 20 November, its report on the progress of work in its initial four-year period, and that the related informal working group examine that report, so that a mandated review of the Mechanism would be complete by 21 December.
