Third Committee

Delegations in the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) lined up today to welcome the establishment of UN Women and the appointment of Michelle Bachelet as its Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General, while underlining the many challenges that remain on the road to women’s empowerment, gender equality and the struggle against gender-based violence throughout the world.

Addressing Member States for the first time as head of the newly created UN Women, Under-Secretary-General Michelle Bachelet told delegates today that the establishment of the new entity was a message from the General Assembly that more needed to be done to make the empowerment of women a reality.

From cybercrime and trafficking in cultural property to poaching on the high seas, speakers in the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today drew attention to new forms of transnational crimes that warrant an international response.

The struggle against organized crime, corruption and trafficking in illicit drugs and human beings is too big for any one country to tackle alone, Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told the Third Committee today, as he appealed to Member States for sustainable funding to enable his Office to fulfil its mandates.

The residual impact of the global economic and financial crisis, fuel crisis and food crisis was high on the minds of speakers in the Third Committee today, with several of them noting how the aftershocks have impeded progress towards achieving social development and the Millennium Development Goals.

Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, appealed to the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) to put social integration and cohesion at the heart of its work, as it opened its session today with a debate on social development.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) met this morning to elect its Chair and other officers for the General Assembly’s sixty-fifth session.

Alarmed at the increase in racist violence and xenophobic ideas in many parts of the world, the General Assembly would express unequivocal condemnation of all forms of racism and racial discrimination by one of five draft resolutions approved today as the Third Committee concluded its work for the current session.

After calling a do-over vote for technical reasons, the Third Committee today approved the wording of a decision that would have the General Assembly welcome the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference and endorse its provisions, while deciding to implement the Review’s outcome as part of the wider implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.