Energy was central to all aspects of development, the Ambassador of Belarus said today, urging United Nations Member States to bridge the current “energy divide” by, among other things, creating a global mechanism to ensure that all countries, especially developing nations and transition economies, gained fair and adequate access to technologies for new and renewable sources of energy.
General Assembly: Press Conference
General Assembly President-elect Ali Abdussalam Treki ( Libya) pledged this afternoon that the priorities of his tenure would be the war on poverty in Africa, United Nations reform, disarmament, and implementation of United Nations resolutions, including those concerning the question of Palestine.
Two senior advisers to the President of the General Assembly for the upcoming Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development today underlined the urgency for restructuring the global financial system, during a press conference at Headquarters.
The 18 newly elected members of the Human Rights Council would need to prove themselves by implementing the international human rights agenda at home and abroad, Craig Mokhiber, Deputy Director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said during a Headquarters news conference this afternoon.
“This is a moment that requires audacity”, President of the General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, of Nicaragua, said today, as he discussed the draft outcome document for the Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, to be held in New York from 1 to 3 June 2009.
Senior advisers to the President of the General Assembly yesterday sounded a call to African nations to participate in next month’s high-level economic summit, as a way to make up for their absence at the creation of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.
With developing countries starting to feel the sting from recessions rooted in rich nations, there was a special need for the United Nations, especially its most representative body, the 192-member General Assembly, to identify inclusive responses to mitigate the impact of the ongoing economic crisis, and initiate the broad-based dialogue required to transform our outdated global financial system, a senior adviser to Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann said today.
GA/9043
MODERATOR: Good morning. I have the pleasure to introduce His Excellency Professor Diogo Freitas do Amaral, President of the General Assembly, who has been here, as you know, from the beginning of the Assembly and who has developed his own creative proposals and ideas, in addition to the official functions he is performing as President of the Assembly. I take the opportunity to welcome him here and to invite him to take the floor.