Despite a “façade” of actively pursuing peace, Israel continued to infringe on the basic human rights of the Palestinians and inflict “untold suffering” through a blockade that prevented the flow of goods and people, even in life-and-death situations, undermining any future prospects for a peaceful settlement, delegates told the Fourth Committee today, as it began its annual discussion of Israeli practices affecting the human rights of Arabs in the occupied territories.

Five years after its establishment, the Peacebuilding Commission was today at a crossroads, and the United Nations must choose whether to place peacebuilding at the heart of its work, or allow the advisory body to settle into the limited role it had developed thus far, General Assembly delegates stressed today as they pledged to conduct their first in-depth review of the Organization’s peacebuilding architecture.

At the inaugural high-level stakeholders meeting in New York, the Member States of the United Nations endorsed the importance of the Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund and pledged further support. A total of 33 Member States spoke at the meeting on 4 November, commending the Fund as a fast, relevant and catalytic resource for supporting peacebuilding initiatives in countries emerging from conflict.

This is the text of the video message by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) global staff meeting, in New York on 7 November:

This is the text of a message today from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (delivered on his behalf by Renata Lok-Dessallien, Resident Coordinator in China) to the 2010 International Finance Forum in Beijing:

The international community needed to prevent a total collapse of the direct negotiations on the Palestinian track, and an end to the occupation and the return of refugees could serve as a “doorway” to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, delegates told the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) today.

In his first address to the General Assembly, the new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today he aimed to change the widespread perception of the Vienna-based body as simply the world’s “nuclear watchdog”, emphasizing instead a balanced approach to pursuing non-proliferation of atomic weapons and the peaceful use of nuclear energy, two of the three pillar objectives of the landmark 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Twenty-one Member States pledged approximately $470 million today at an event in support of United Nations development activities for 2011.

The General Assembly, through elections and appointments, today filled vacancies in the Committee for Programme and Coordination, the main subsidiary body of the Assembly and the Economic and Social Council for such work, as well as in the Committee on Conferences, which advises the Assembly on all matters pertaining to the organization of United Nations conferences.

The menace of piracy off the coast of Somalia was outpacing international efforts to stem it, B. Lynn Pascoe, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, told the Security Council today, emphasizing: “Warships alone will not solve the problem.”