Breakthroughs at the UN, Negotiated by WILPF's Staff (and sister NGOs)

Breaking News from the UN, from WILPF UN Office Director Anjie Rosga, PhD:

It's been a big day in New York City as the General Assembly opened, with several big news events of relevance for WILPF members:

1) UN mission finds evidence of war crimes by both sides in Gaza conflict

A U.N. investigation concluded Tuesday that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, raising the prospect that officials may seek prosecution in the International Criminal Court. Read the AP article on NPR's website.

2) New General Assembly President opens session with call for UN reform
The General Assembly opened its 64th annual session today with its new President, Ali Treki of Libya, calling for reform of the United Nations with an expanded Security Council representing full geographic diversity and an Assembly that has the ability to implement its resolutions.

3) UN to establish single new agency to deal with rights of women
(This was a major success for WILPF's PeaceWomen Project which has been working for more than three years with other organizations here in New York and elsewhere to push for this important dimension of UN system-wide reform -- hats off to PeaceWomen's Director Sam Cook for all her good work as part of the GEAR-NY [Gender Equality Architecture Reform-New York] Lobbying Group!)

4) Ban exhorts world to seize momentum to reach disarmament goals
(Ray Acheson, Director of WILPF's Reaching Critical Will Project has been similarly hard at work, together with Susi Snyder, WILPF's Secretary General, in various efforts to support forward momentum leading up to the 24th September Security Council Summit on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation -- check out www.reachingcriticalwill.org for news from the recent conference in Mexico City where Ray gave a well-received talk.)