Round-up Release

The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fifty-second session at United Nations Headquarters from 27 January to 13 March.

An increasingly diverse range of experts addressed the Security Council as it grappled with complex national postures in 2019, a year marked by widespread popular uprisings and the erosion of hard-won international treaties.

The global climate emergency as well as zero-sum geopolitics, declining development assistance and rising global debt set the backdrop for world leaders as the General Assembly began the annual general debate for its seventy-fourth session, with many calling for solidarity to meet the planet’s most pressing challenges.

NEW YORK, 2 December (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) — The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fifty‑first session at United Nations Headquarters from 14 October to 29 November 2019.  There were no plenary parts during the session and its seven weeks were devoted entirely to the technical examination of submissions at the geographic information systems laboratories and other technical facilities of the Division.

SALT LAKE CITY, 28 August — At a first-of-its-kind United Nations gathering in the western United States, representatives of non-governmental and faith-based organizations, as well as educators, students and individual activists from Utah and around the world adopted today an outcome document outlining a global vision for inclusive and sustainable cities and communities by 2030, with youth drafting and adopting a stand-alone climate compact.

The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its fiftieth session at United Nations Headquarters from 1 July to 16 August 2019.  The first plenary part of the session was held from 29 July to 2 August and the second one from 13 to 16 August.  The remaining five weeks were devoted to the technical examination of submissions at the geographic information systems laboratories and other technical facilities of the Division.

NEW YORK, 20 June (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) — The twenty-ninth Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was held at Headquarters from 17 to 19 June 2019.  For background information, see Press Release SEA/2104.

NEW YORK, 18 March (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) ― The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf held its forty‑ninth session at United Nations Headquarters from 28 January to 15 March.  The first plenary part of the session was held from 4 to 8 February and the second from 4 to 8 March.  The remaining five weeks were devoted to the technical examination of submissions at the geographic information systems laboratories and other technical facilities of the Division.

NEW YORK, 16 January (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) — The resumed twenty-eighth Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was held at United Nations Headquarters on 15 January.

The Security Council remained largely paralysed by expanding rifts and mounting tensions involving its permanent members in 2018, a year characterized by the rise of nationalist movements and breaches of long-standing global norms that sparked questions about the very future of multilateralism.