The UN General Assembly advances the global agenda.(the author's personal views as president of the sixty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly)
Publication Date: 01-MAR-07
Publication Title: UN Chronicle
Format: Online
Author: Al Khalifa, Haya Rashed

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Description

Presiding over the sixty-first session of the General Assembly, I quickly learned that an effective president needs to be able to juggle many issues and remain in close contact with key negotiating groups and regional constituencies. There are a plethora of agenda items that the Assembly must consider each year and a variety of competing interests and issues among Member States that must be resolved to broker consensus.

During the session, the Assembly met in plenary 83 times, the General Committee five times. It held four meetings of the Tenth Emergency Special Session to discuss the situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories and had 20 informal consultations; by March 2007, it adopted 258 resolutions. I have also travelled and have been invited on official visits to several countries. With such a packed agenda, my days are very long and I rely heavily on my excellent team of international civil servants and diplomats.

One of the most memorable highlights of my presidency was overseeing the historic change of UN leadership: paying tribute to the record achievements that will be Kofi Annan's legacy, and swearing in his capable successor, Ban Ki-moon. I have developed a close relationship with both Secretaries-General. By working closely together, I believe, we are better able to align Member States interests with that of UN bureaucracy and deliver on our shared programme of work more effectively.

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When I took over the presidency in September 2006, there was a clear programme of work to follow-up on. At the 2000 Millennium Summit and the 2005 World Summit, Heads of States and Government set out and...



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