United Nations

GA/10460
17 May 2006

General Assembly Elects Final Seven Member States to Serve on Peacebuilding Commission's Organizational Committee

In Separate Decision, Assembly Changes Dates for Midterm Review of Programme on Least Developed Countries

NEW YORK, 16 May (UN Headquarters) -- The General Assembly this afternoon elected Chile, El Salvador, Jamaica, Egypt, Burundi, Fiji and Croatia to the newly created Peacebuilding Commission's Organizational Committee.

Members of the Committee would serve for renewable terms of two years, beginning on the day of its first meeting.  By the drawing of lots, the Assembly decided that Jamaica and Croatia would serve an initial period of one year.

With today's election, the 31-member Organizational Committee, a standing body responsible for developing its own rules of procedure and working methods, was fully constituted, with the other categories of members having already been selected or elected from the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, major troop-contributing countries and top financial contributors.

The other members of the Organizational Committee are China, Denmark, France, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, United States, Angola, Belgium, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Poland, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands and Norway.

The notion of a Peacebuilding Commission was first proposed in 2004 by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's High-Level Panel on Threats Challenges and Change.  In his 2005 report In Larger Freedom, the Secretary-General envisioned the Commission as an intergovernmental advisory body which could marshal resources at the disposal of the international community to advise and propose strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention on reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development in countries emerging from conflict.

Assembly President Jan Eliasson (Sweden) recalled today that the Assembly and the Security Council decided through simultaneous resolutions on 20 December 2005 to operationalize the decision by the World Summit to establish the Peacebuilding Commission -- an historic achievement.  "You decided to establish a body that would support countries in fragile post-conflict situations, a body that would help bring an end to the pattern of relapsing into conflict and a body that would be a strong link between security and development."

He added that the elected or selected 31 members of the Organizational Committee now had a special responsibility to start preparing their first meeting, the date of which the Secretary-General would inform them shortly.  The Assembly would hold an annual debate to review the Peacebuilding Commission's work.

The representative of El Salvador also made a statement following the election.

In other action today, the Assembly decided -- by adopting a draft decision contained in document A/60/L.54 -- to convene the high-level meeting on the midterm comprehensive global review of the implementation of the Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2001-2010.  The meeting would be in New York on 18 September -- from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. -- and 19 September, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.  It would be chaired by the Assembly President.

Today's decision supersedes the Assembly's earlier decision to convene the meeting on 19 and 20 September.  The sixty-first regular session of the General Assembly would open, in accordance with resolution 57/301 of 13 March 2003, on 12 September, and the general debate would be held from 19 to 29 September.

Voting Results