NOON BRIEFING HIGHLIGHTS BY PAULINA KUBIAK GREER,

SPOKESPERSON FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT ABDULLA SHAHID
United Nations Headquarters, New York

SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM

Underway in the General Assembly Hall today, are the intergovernmental negotiations on the question of equitable representation on// and increase in the membership of// the Security Council and other matters related to the Council.

The informal meeting of the plenary will be held today and tomorrow.

The Permanent Representatives of Qatar and Denmark are the co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Negotiations.

 

VENEZUELA

Later this afternoon, the President of the General Assembly Abdulla Shahid, will meet with Marta Valiñas, the Chairperson of the International Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela. The meeting will be an opportunity to brief President Shahid on the mandate of Mission’s mandate.

The independent observers are in New York on an official mission.

 

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day.

President Shahid will participate in the United Nations observance tomorrow at 10AM Eastern, on the theme of “gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.”

And you heard some of the details for the event from Stephane.

 

HOPE FELLOWSHIP

And before I take your questions, I will briefly give the podium to Jaala Jeremiah, one of our eight Fellows for HOPE. That stands for Harnessing Opportunity for Promoting Empowerment of Youth.

The Fellowship is funded by the generous support of the European Union and other Member States.

Jaala is working with the communications team for the next few weeks and she will speak to you briefly about the UNITAR training program that Fellows take part in on Fridays.

 

JAALA

Good afternoon,

My name is Jaala Jeremiah, I am from the Republic of Nauru.

I won’t take up too much of your time, allow me to speak on how we spend our Fridays as part of the Fellowship. We are fortunate to have been allocated a day dedicated to training workshops on various themes, facilitated by UNITAR. Each week we are introduced to different topics, from the introduction to the different bodies of the UN, multilateral negotiations, UN protocol to Climate Change. Our most recent training, which took place last Friday was on the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda.

During this workshop, we were introduced to the origins of the MDGs and its evolution to the SDGs, the 2030 Agenda, the process of follow-up, and review of the 2030 Agenda as well as the Voluntary National Review (VNRs). We had 4 guest speakers from Antigua & Barbuda, Nauru, Uganda, and Zimbabwe who presented their VNRs experience.

 

QUESTIONS

The Spokesperson was asked about the terminology used by President Shahid in reference to the conflict in Ukraine. The journalist was asking whether the President was changing his wording for the benefit of any Member State – and the answer is “no”.