The United Nations Disarmament Commission, in an organizational meeting today, elected Enrique Roman-Morey of Peru as Chairman of its upcoming three-week substantive session — slated to run from 2 to 20 April — as consensus on its provisional agenda remained elusive.

With the political situation throughout North Africa and the Middle East in flux after months of anti-Government protests, the dismal reality of climate change playing out across South-east Asia and the Horn of Africa, and the world’s major economic engines still mired in recession, the General Assembly opened its sixty-sixth session with a busy agenda reflecting many of the year’s most vital international issues.

The Security Council this morning decided that an election to fill the vacancy on the International Court of Justice, created by the recent resignation of Judge Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh, will take place on 27 April 2012. Resolution 2034 (2012), adopted unanimously, notes with regret that the resignation of Judge Al-Khasawneh took effect on 31 December 2011.

Emphasizing the importance of the rule of law as one of the key elements of conflict prevention, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and peacebuilding, the Security Council today pledged its commitment to upholding international law, and reaffirmed its strong opposition to exempting from punishment those responsible for committing serious violations of humanitarian and human rights norms.

Three exhibitions on the Holocaust will open to the public in the Main Gallery of the Visitors Lobby, as part of a week-long series of Holocaust remembrance activities at the United Nations. The International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust is 27 January and the theme of this year’s observance is “Children and the Holocaust”.

More than 350 New York metropolitan area high school students will gather at United Nations Headquarters on 23 January 2012 to discuss their experiences with IWitness, the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute’s new online educational resource that gives teachers and students access to the video testimonies of more than 1,000 Holocaust eyewitnesses from the Institute’s archive of nearly 52,000 testimonies.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, to be observed on 27 January:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced today the appointment of Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, a national of Brazil, as Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, at the Assistant Secretary-General level.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Beirut on the afternoon of Friday, 13 January, after an overnight flight from New York and a transfer in Paris. The main aims of the trip were to attend a high-level United Nations meeting on Reform and Transitions to Democracy, visit staff of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and hold bilateral meetings with Lebanese leaders.