HIGHLIGHTS OF PRESS BRIEFING BY BRENDEN VARMA, SPOKESPERSON FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT MIROSLAV LAJČÁK

United Nations Headquarters, New York

16 October 2017

 

SOMALIA: PRESIDENT OUTRAGED BY TERRORIST ATTACK

  • On Somalia, the President tweeted that he was outraged and horrified by the still rising death toll following this weekend’s terrorist attack in Mogadishu.
  • He also expressed his condolences to and solidarity with the people and Government of Somalia at the high-level inauguration of Africa Week 2017, which took place this morning.
  • At that event, the President also added: “In the past, Africa was expected to listen. It was expected to accept the ideas and conditions of others. That era is over… When it comes to its own development, Africa now has the most powerful voice of all. We need to listen to it, and learn from it.”

15 COUNTRIES ELECTED TO HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

  • The General Assembly met this morning to elect fifteen members of the Human Rights Council, which is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly.
  • The following Member States were elected: Afghanistan, Angola, Australia, Chile, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Qatar, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain and Ukraine.
  • This Human Rights Council election was the first one conducted with new ballot papers. In the past, ballot papers had been completely blank. Now, they contain the names of the candidate countries, along with additional space to inscribe other names. The idea was to make the process smoother.
  • The Spokesperson was asked for the President’s reaction to Member States distributing gifts in order to garner votes in the Human Rights Council elections, and whether there should be value caps on such gifts. The Spokesperson later said that the President believed that the elections should be a competition between candidates – not a competition over who could give the most expensive gifts.
  • The Spokesperson also later noted that, by resolution A/RES/71/323, the General Assembly had decided that, during its seventy-second session, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the revitalization of the work of the General Assembly, which is open to all Member States, “shall start to consider the potential concept and scope of a code of conduct to guide the conduct of election campaigns by Member States, with a view to improving the standards of transparency, accountability and equity”.

PRESIDENT HIGHLIGHTS LINKS BETWEEN FOOD SECURITY AND MIGRATION

  • Today is World Food Day, and the President delivered remarks at a related event this afternoon.
  • He spoke about the “real nexus between food security, rural development and migration”.

CLIMATE CHANGE THE MOST POPULAR TOPIC AT GENERAL DEBATE

  • The Department for General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) has now finalized a thorough and comprehensive report on statistics from the General Debate.
  • It found that climate change was the most frequently-mentioned issue, with 165 speakers (84% of the membership) focusing on the topic. Climate change made the strongest showing this year when compared to all the years in which it had been raised.
  • Sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals were mentioned by 162 speakers (83%). This was a drop from last year (185 speakers).
  • Terrorism was the third most mentioned issue this session, with 157 speakers (80%) referring to it.
  • The threat of nuclear weapons was raised as a topic by 136 speakers (69%). That was an increase of 97% over the previous session, when only 69 speakers (36%) mentioned nuclear weapons.