Sixth Committee

Acting today on the recommendations of its Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) and Sixth Committee (Legal), the General Assembly today adopted a total of 65 texts, including 49 resolutions and 16 decisions addressing a wide range of international concerns tackling, among others, the effects of atomic radiation and support for the Palestinian refugee agency, as well as the codification of two international binding treaties on crimes against humanity and the protection of persons in disasters.

Concluding its seventy-ninth session today, the Sixth Committee (Legal) approved, without a vote, 16 draft texts — one of which saw the Committee, in a historic process of informal discussions, able to maintain its tradition of consensus as it launched the process to negotiate an international convention to govern the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

The Sixth Committee (Legal) today took note of the oral reports of four of its Working Groups, deferred nine requests for observer status and heard from its focal point on revitalizing the General Assembly’s work.

The Sixth Committee (Legal) completed its debate this morning on the status of the Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, with speakers underscoring the key role of these instruments in protecting victims of armed conflicts, while some pointed to an ‘international silence’ amidst the ongoing international humanitarian law violations and others urging greater compliance to the Protocol’s tenets.  (For background, see Press Release GA/L/3735.)

As the Sixth Committee (Legal) began its consideration of the Secretary-General’s report on the status of the Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 today (document A/79/174), speakers underscored those instruments’ continued relevance — and the need to respect their provisions — despite the reality that modern war looks different than it did 75 years ago.

Delegates of the Sixth Committee (Legal), concluding their consideration on diplomatic protection, today discussed a wide variety of issues ranging from challenges arising from their relations with the host country, along with its related report, to deliberating the use of sanctions as a tool for maintaining international peace and security under the Charter of the United Nations, following the Special Committee on the Charter’s presentation of its report.

The United Nations’ efforts to train individuals the world over in international law — the shared foundation on which Member States address global issues — is indispensable, speakers stressed, as the Sixth Committee (Legal) today discussed the Programme of Assistance in the Teaching, Study, Dissemination and Wider Appreciation of International Law, before taking up the Secretary-General’s report on the protection of diplomatic and consular missions and representatives.

Underscoring the important contribution of the International Law Commission to the progressive development and codification of international law, the Commission’s Chair says it also offers adequate answers to the new challenges faced by the international community, as the Sixth Committee (Legal) concluded today its debate on the third cluster of topics of the Commission’s annual report.

Concluding their debate on the second cluster of topics from the International Law Commission’s annual report — and beginning discussion of the third — speakers in the Sixth Committee (Legal) today covered a wide variety of issues to which international law applies while also contemplating the sources that may inform such law in an expanding legal universe.

During the International Court of Justice’s annual visit to the Sixth Committee (Legal), its President emphasized that people’s rights are the ultimate concern of international law, as he spoke about the place of the individual in the Court’s jurisprudence and highlighted the significant increase involving human rights aspects.