NOON BRIEFING HIGHLIGHTS

Spokesperson for General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi
United Nations Headquarters, New York

Tuesday, 18 April 2023

 

 

HLAB

You just heard from High-level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism.

President Kőrösi met with former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven right before their press briefing.

They handed over a copy of the report to President Kőrösi.

There are couple of suggestions specifically concerning the General Assembly in the report.

President Kőrösi looks forward to studying the report.

He said that it reinforces the approach of his office – which aims for a major transformation.

 

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

In the General Assembly today…

Member States took action on reports of the Fifth Committee from its first resumed session.

These were done by consensus.

Among the items was a change in the membership of the Committee on Contributions – among two representatives of the Republic of Korea.

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Member States then adopted by consensus the first General Assembly resolution on the topic of social and solidarity economy for sustainable development.

The resolutions requests that the Secretary-General to prepare a report, in collaboration with the UN inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy, on this issue.

The resolution was introduced by Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice-President and Minister for Work and Social Economy of Spain.

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The next item on the agenda was a draft decision related to the BBNJ Treaty, known as the Treaty of the High Seas, an agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction.

As the representative from Singapore explained when introducing the draft decision, in addition to the resolutions on this issue, today’s decision requests the Secretary-General to provide the necessary support and services to the open-ended informal working group tasked with ensuring uniformity of language in the draft agreement and harmonizing the six language versions, and to convene a further resumed fifth session of the conference on 19 and 20 June of this year, in line with requirements set out in the decision.

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The last item on the agenda was related to the UNGA dates, and specifically on moving the date for the Summit of the Future to 21 September.

UNGA schedule is currently as follows, as outlined by President Kőrösi in today’s plenary:

 

Monday, 18 September

  • High level political forum on sustainable developed under the auspices of the General Assembly, also known as the SDG Summit

 

Tuesday, 19 September

  • General Debate
  • SDG Summit

 

Wednesday, 20 September

  • General Debate
  • High-level dialogue on Financing for Development
  • High-level meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, which includes a plenary segment and multi-stakeholder panels held in parallel

This is also the date that the Secretary-General has informed President Kőrösi that he intends of convene a Climate Ambition Summit.

 

Thursday, 21 September

  • General Debate
  • Ministerial meeting of the Summit of the Future
  • High-level meeting of the Universal Health Coverage, which includes a plenary segment and multi-stakeholder panels held in parallel

 

Friday, 22 September

  • General Debate
  • High-level meeting of the on the fight Against Tuberculosis, which includes a plenary segment and multi-stakeholder panels held in parallel

 

SG/SDGS

Speaking of dates, there is a new one on the UNGA calendar.

There will be an informal meeting of the General Assembly to hear a briefing from the Secretary-General on his Special Edition report on “Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals”.

That’s on Tuesday, 25 April at 3PM in the ECOSOC chamber.

Ambassador Fergal Mythen, Permanent Representative of Ireland, will deliver remarks on behalf of the co-facilitators on the political declaration for the SDG Summit.

 

BILATERALS

Turning to today’s bilaterals…

President Kőrösi today met with Ambassador Amrit Bahadur Rai, Permanent Representative of Nepal. This meeting is in the context of the LDC chairmanship under Nepal.

The President will later today meet with Bahtijors Hassans, the President of the Trade and Development Board at UNCTAD.

Also today, the President will meet with the new Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN, Ambassador Filipo Tarakinikini.

Among other bilaterals, President Kőrösi is meeting with the Group of Friends of the Jewish Culture, Gregory Lafitte and Rebeka Goba.

 

QUESTIONS

There were no questions for the Spokesperson.