Back to Home Page

Back to General Assembly

12 October 1999

There is no plenary meeting today. The next scheduled meeting is Thursday morning, 14 October, when the General Assembly will elect five non-permanent members of the Security Council.

At yesterday afternoon’s meeting, the Assembly, on the proposal of President Theo-Ben Gurirab, decided to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 11 November, rather than the 15^th, as had been suggested by the Member States that sponsored the item.

The President also announced that he had requested the Permanent Representative of Denmark, Jorgen Bojer, to coordinate the informal consultations on draft resolutions concerning item 20, entitled "Strengthening of the coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance of the United Nations, including special economic assistance". Last year, in resolution 53/1, the Assembly adopted 15 resolutions, A-O, on special economic assistance to individual countries and regions, plus one each on: the safety and security of humanitarian personnel and protection of United Nations personnel (53/87), on strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations (53/88) and on emergency international assistance for peace, normalcy and reconstruction of war-stricken Afghanistan (53/203).

Four of the Main Committees are meeting today. The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) will continue its general debate this afternoon on all disarmament and international security agenda items. A total of 100 speakers are inscribed for the debate that will conclude on 20 October.

At two meetings today, the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) will be discussingimplementation of the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) (A/54/316). The report before the Committee calls poverty in general, in particular abject poverty, one of the central challenges for the international community in the new millennium, despite the significant progress in development at the end of the twentieth century. It says that recent experience and discussion underscore the need for designing poverty alleviation strategies that cover a comprehensive mix of policies and programmes and encompass all interacting development sectors impacting on the poor.

In designing and implementing programme options for improving the conditions of the poor, the report says three factors are essential for success: good governance; an efficient administrative and institutional support structure at both the national and local levels; and adequate human and financial resource capacity and active partnership among all development actors. The report adds that the international community has a key role in assisting developing countries in reducing poverty and deprivation through development cooperation. The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is observed on 17 October.

A second document before the Committee is a letter from Bangladesh transmitting the text of the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the Twenty-first Century, which emerged from the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference, held in the Netherlands from 12 to 15 May 1999. The Appeal addresses these issues: the root causes of war/culture of peace; international humanitarian and human rights law and institutions; prevention, resolution and transformation of violent conflict; and disarmament and human security.

Also at two meetings today, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) is continuing its general discussion of the items on advancement of women, and implementation of the outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women.

This afternoon, the Sixth Committee (Legal) will continue its discussion of the report of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) on the work of its thirty-second session (A/54/17).

I’ve received several queries on whether the General Assembly will be discussing the death penalty. I’m told that there’s a conference taking place at the Roosevelt Hotel here in Manhattan on that topic. By way of a response, I wish to draw attention to a draft resolution, sponsored by Finland, entitled "Question of the death penalty" (A/C.3/54/L/8), which was submitted under agenda item 116 (a) on human rights questions: implementation of human rights instruments. The Third Committee secretariat informs me that this draft will come up for a vote "towards the end of the session". The draft resolution would call on all States that still maintain the death penalty progressively to restrict the number of offences for which the death penalty may be imposed, and to establish a moratorium on executions, with a view to completely abolishing the death penalty.

Copies of the Assembly President’s appointments for today are available in room 378 and on the Internet. He has a meeting this afternoon with Mr. Boubacar Toure, Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Liaison Office with the United Nations.