Round-up Release

The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fifty-seventh session at United Nations Headquarters, from 23 January to 10 March.

As the Security Council fully resumed in-person meetings, the invasion of Ukraine at the start of the year by the Russian Federation — a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Council — plunged the 15-nation organ into a fractious new normal, widening pre-existing rifts, making consensus more laborious than ever to achieve and impeding efforts to fulfil their responsibility in maintaining international peace and security.

Speaking at the largest General Assembly gathering since the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person events and devastated global travel some three years ago, world leaders this September called on the international community to unite in the face of the conflict in Ukraine, global climate emergency, and emerging food, fuel and cost-of-living crises.

The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fifty-sixth session at United Nations Headquarters, from 5 October to 22 November.

NEW YORK, 22 August 2022 (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) — The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fifty-fifth session at United Nations Headquarters from 5 July to 19 August 2022. The plenary parts of the session were held from 1 to 5 and from 8 to 12 August. The remainder of the session was devoted to the technical examination of submissions at the geographic information systems laboratories and other technical facilities of the Division. Thus, for the first time after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission met for seven weeks, including two weeks of plenary meetings, as originally scheduled, including in-person meetings with delegations.

NEW YORK, 20 June (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs) ― The thirty-second Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was held at Headquarters from 13 to 17 June.  The background press release can be found at:  www.un.org/press/en/2022/sea2141.doc.htm

The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fifty-fourth session at United Nations Headquarters from 21 February to 11 March.

A year into the altered reality that was life during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Security Council found itself in a largely transitional period, focused on shifting geopolitical dynamics and struggling to keep pace with increasingly dire humanitarian needs, as conflicts flared amid the pandemic’s fallout, a vastly unequal recovery began to take shape and extreme poverty rose globally for the first time in decades.

Along with the escalating climate crisis, the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing vaccine inequity captured the attention of world leaders gathered for the General Assembly’s seventy-sixth session this September.

The resumed thirty-first Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, presided by Holger Martinsen (Argentina), was held at United Nations Headquarters on 8 December.