Seventieth anniversary of the United Nations

Background

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the beginning of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations when he was attending the African Union Summit in Malabo, Guinea to commemorate the past developments including the UN task force achievements and the work for humanity. He has marked it with a name "UN70". He also focused on the unification of the international community in order to make the UN more powerful to better handle the problems of the world. It was also observed that on 26 June 1945, the UN Charter was initialised for ratification in San Francisco.^[1]

Mogens Lykketoft replaces Sam Kutesa

The United Nations General Assembly has unanimously elected its new president to Mogens Lykketoft who is Denmark’s former parliament speaker for the 70th anniversary session. He took the office in September after replacing Sam Kutesa of Uganda, the former president of UN general assembly.^[2]

Events and planning

The United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) is given the planning of the celebration related events and special activities which are planned to be held for a period of 16 months. Some of them includes the celebrations of the International day of Peace on 21 September and others.^[3]

Intercontinental Cycling Tour

World Environment Day was celebrated in Istanbul on 14 June, though it comes on June 5, as "International Bicycle Tour" having more than 10000 participants who rode their bicycles together to mark the event.^[4]

Trees Plantation Event

Over 2000 Trees Planted on the Slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania as an event to mark environment protection as the prime motto.^[5]

Multilingual Essay Contest

United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) invited names from university students across the world and almost 70 student got prizes for winning.^[6]

United Nations' Exhibition

On 29 June, an exhibition to mark the seventieth anniversary of the United Nations, was organised by Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts, United Nations Foundation and the Department of Public Information. The exhibition had on display the 33 original artworks of Norman Rockwell and other paintings.^[7] The name of the exhibition was "We the Peoples: Norman Rockwell’s United Nations".^[8]

Second World War 70th anniversary

Not only it is the UN's 70th anniversary but also of the end of the Second World War. On 6 May 2015, a concert was organised by the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to observe it.^[9]

Fourth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament

The theme of the Conference of Speakers of all IPU(Inter-Parliamentary Union) member parliaments and of non-member parliaments from across the world, was on peace, democracy, and development.^[10]

Sustainable Development Goals

Pope Francis and heads of about 150 nations assembled at the United Nations and approved new set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which were finalised after three years intense discussions.^[11] They emphasize more social development and environment protection. On September 25, 2015 a resolution named "Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda" for sustainable Development was adopted which included new global goals with a motto of transforming the world in a better direction.^[12] Along with those seventeen goals it has 169 targets to fight inequality along with erasing poverty, and take on the climate change effects over the next fifteen years.^[13]

Adoption of draft on UN reforms

The UN adopted a landmark text-based negotiations for the pending bill on reforms of the Security Council. The efforts behind are attributed to all the countries and especially to UN General Assembly former President Sam Kutesa who supported the action on the draft decision and took the process one step forward.^[14]

Treaty Event

The UN treaty office organised a very crucial treaty event in New York, which was a special event where Santiago Villalpando, the Chief of the UN Office of Legal Affairs Treaty Section, addressed all the signatories to sign on to or to ratify or accede to multilateral treaties, they had promised earlier. About 560 multilateral treaties were deposited with the UN Secretary-General.^[15]

References

1. "United Nations Seventieth Anniversary". www.un.org. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
2. "Kutesa’s term at UN ends September | Eagle Online". www.eagle.co.ug. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
3. "Upcoming Activities in Celebration of the UN’s 70th Anniversary | United Nations Seventieth Anniversary". www.un.org. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
4. "Pinned.news : World Environment Day Intercontinental Cycling Tour: World Leaders Urged to Work more against Climate Change". Retrieved 2015-09-29.
5. Ngowi, Deus (2000-01-01). "Tanzania: Planting Trees to Mark 70 Years of UN". Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam). Retrieved 2015-09-29.
6. "UN News - Winners of multilingual essay contest on new UN sustainability agenda honoured in New York". UN News Service Section. Retrieved 2015-09-30.
7. "‘We the Peoples: Norman Rockwell’s United Nations’ Exhibition to Open at Headquarters 29 June | Meetings Coverage and Press Releases". www.un.org. Retrieved 2015-09-30.
8. "We the Peoples: Norman Rockwell’s UNITED NATIONS". Retrieved 2015-09-30.
9. "Concert to mark the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War - Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra". webtv.un.org. Retrieved 2015-09-30.
10. "Press Releases". www.hellenicparliament.gr. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
11. Online, GMA News. "United Nations approves ambitious new set of global goals | News | GMA News Online". www.gmanetwork.com. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
12. "Goals to transform the world". Retrieved 2015-09-30.
13. Narayanan, Nayantara. "The more ambitious the better: UN adopts new goals on ending poverty, sustainable development". Retrieved 2015-09-30.
14. Diplomat, Ankit Panda, The. "Modi, Abe, Merkel, Rousseff Together: G4 to Meet on UN Sidelines". Retrieved 2015-09-28.
15. "UN News - Seventieth anniversary treaty event to focus on UN contributions to international affairs". UN News Service Section. Retrieved 2015-09-30. horizontal tab character in |title= at position 11 (help)