Main committees
Because of the great number of questions it is called upon to consider, the Assembly allocates items relevant to its work among its six main committees. Each committee deliberates during the Assembly session, votes on issues by single majority and submits draft resolutions to the General Assembly for a vote in plenary.
The six main committees are
- First Committee - Disarmament and International Security
- Second Committee - Economic and Financial
- Third Committee - Social, Humanitarian and Cultural
- Fourth Committee - Special Political and Decolonization
- Fifth Committee - Administrative and Budgetary
- Sixth Committee - Legal
The main committees submit a separate report to the plenary on the items considered by them. These reports constitute the draft resolutions/decisions which are being recommended to the plenary.
Find main committees DOCUMENTS
The symbols of the main committee documents have the following construction:
|
A/ General Assembly |
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-/C.1-6 committee number 1-6 |
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-/session number |
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-/consecutive number |
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Ex. A/C.3/58/10 General Assembly, Third Committee, 58th session, document 10 |
The meeting records of the main committees are published as summary records. They submit a separate report to the plenary - working documents for the plenary - on every agenda item allocated to them, transmitting the final version of draft resolutions/decisions which are being recommended to the plenary for adoption. The draft resolutions are entitled according to the item they reflect, such as Crime prevention and criminal justice: report of the Third Committee.
- Information about the main committees and their work as well as documentation.
- Overview of the main committees in Dag Hammarskjöld Library Research Guide.
- UN Press Releases & Meetings Coverage. Main committee press releases from October 1995 onwards.
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
- UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
- Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.
- All UN documents from 1993-.
- All resolutions of the Principal Organs from 1946-.
- All Security Council plenary documents from 1946- in English, French and Spanish.
- All supplements to the General Assembly Official Records (GAOR) from 1946-.
- All General Assembly plenary meeting records from 1946- in English, French and Spanish.
- Older documents are being scanned: Update on UN Digitization Programme.