Requests from subsidiary organs to hold meetings – GA regular session – Letter from Chairman of Cttee on Conferences

Letter dated 9 September 2003 from the Chairman of the Committee on Conferences addressed to the President of the General Assembly

  I am writing in connection with the provisions of section I, paragraph 7, of General Assembly resolution 40/243, according to which no subsidiary organ of the General Assembly may meet at United Nations Headquarters during a regular session of the Assembly unless explicitly authorized by the Assembly. Those subsidiary organs that wish to meet during a regular session of the Assembly shall submit their requests through the Committee on Conferences.

  I wish to inform you that the Committee on Conferences has received requests from the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the Working Group on the Financing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and the United Nations Children’s Fund to meet in New York during the main part of the fifty-eighth session of the General Assembly.

  The Committee on Conferences, having carefully considered these requests and the reasons for them, does not object, on the strict understanding that such meetings would have to be accommodated within available facilities and services, so that the activities of the General Assembly itself are not adversely affected. The chairpersons of these bodies will also be informed of the statistics relating to their utilization of conference services in the past. If the benchmark figure of 80 per cent was not reached in the previous year, the Committee on Conferences will express its concern and make proposals for improvement.

   Accordingly, I should be grateful if the General Assembly would explicitly authorize the Committee on Relations with the Host Country, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the Working Group on the Financing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and the United Nations Children’s Fund to meet, in accordance with their requests, subject to the conditions set out in the foregoing paragraph.

(Signed) Mohammad Tal 

Chairman

Committee on Conferences

*  A/58/150. 

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