Reporting that Syria missed an October deadline to respond to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the country’s reported use and stockpiling of such weapons, the senior United Nations disarmament official urged today that the Security Council end its divisions on the critical matter and act to resolve it.
The General Assembly decided today that Headquarters will host a special session at the level of Heads of State and Government on 3 and 4 December in response to the COVID‑19 pandemic. It also debated the annual report of the Human Rights Council and earmarked 1 December for a special solemn meeting in memory of the victims of the Second World War.
The Security Council decided to extend for one year its authorization to States working as part of the multinational stabilization force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and heard a briefing by the high representative in that country, with voting results announced virtually in accordance with the temporary silence procedure adopted for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched the Food Coalition, a multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral alliance that aims to ensure global food access and increase the resilience of agri-food systems. The pandemic could add 132 million more people to the world's undernourished in 2020, FAO says, on top of the 690 million hungry people in 2019.
The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Inga Rhonda King (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines):
In lieu of International Law Week - rendered impossible due to COVID‑19 - the Sixth Committee (Legal) heard oral reports from the Chair‑Designate and the Secretary of the International Law Commission today, as delegates, praising the Commission’s adaptation of work methods around the pandemic’s limitations, spotlighted the importance of its recent issuance of the first issues paper on sea‑level rise in relation to international law.
Continuing its joint general debate today, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) approved seven draft resolutions concerning Israeli practices in occupied Arab lands and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as well as five additional texts on various subjects.
Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message on World Tsunami Awareness Day, observed today:
The United Nations and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will host a discussion entitled, “Holocaust education in crisis? Challenges and responses”, at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 10 November.
As the Sixth Committee (Legal) took up the Secretary‑General’s annual report on the Status of the Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and relating to the protection of victims of armed conflicts (document A/75/263), some speakers highlighted the importance of ratifying the Protocols universally, while others voiced reservations based on their national experience.
