Opening speeches Session - Photo Reportage ~ The UN Herald

On thursday, 18th April 2013 Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana hosted the first round of General Aseembly sessions. Official opening was delivered by presiding officers, Ms. Karolina Praček and Mr. Damjan Vinko. After that, keynote address was given by Her Excellency Ms. Sanja Štiglic, who is ambassador and former permanent representative of Republic of Slovenia to the United Nations. The main part of session was dedicated to delegates of states, who were presenting their views and ideas in opening speeches.

Very well prepared session was opened by welcoming speech given by presiding officers and it included all the necessary introductory remarks about the session. They also discussed about the role of United Nations in the current international community and concluded that, although Organization of United Nations is not a perfect institution, it is still a precious one. They expressed optimism about the upcoming negotiations in the General Assembly and called for ''more representation, more democracy and more inclusiveness.''

Her Excellency Ms. Štiglic addresed the forum of delegates, presiding officers, professors and journalists. In her wonderful speech she also touched the topic of importance of United Nations in today's world. According to her, international community would be very different without United Nations and she believes that ''UN has a responsibility to protect the population if states themselves manifestly fail to protect them.'' Additionally, she talked about three key main topics of current round of negotiations: forced migrations, minority issues and Security Council reform. She is convinced that key to resolve the problems of forced migration and minorities is ''to focus even more on the root causes of conflicts.'' She also believes that Security Council needs to be reformed in a way that it ''better reflect present geopolitical reality and enlarges number of permanent and non-permanent seats.''

Largest part of the session was reserved for opening speeches of the permanent representatives of General Assembly member states. You can read more detailed report on their speeches here:

Bellow you can find some photo impressions of first General Assembly session in this round of negotiations. More photos are available here to download.