From Promise to Practice: Revitalizing the General Assembly for the New Millennium

The International Peace Institute, in collaboration with and thanks to generous support from the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, convened a high-level retreat on May 16-17 entitled From Promise to Practice: Revitalizing the General Assembly for the New Millennium.

The retreat brought together, in an informal setting, approximately twenty-five permanent representatives and a very few deputy permanent representatives in addition to a member of the Secretariat and a key outside expert respectively over dinner and one full day of deliberations at the Greentree Estate in Manhasset, New York.

The purpose of the retreat was to provide an opportunity for open and frank discussion on intergovernmental revitalization and, possibly, reform with a focus on the premier deliberative body of the UN system: the General Assembly (GA). The ultimate goal of the retreat was to generate concrete suggestions for improvement or resolution in order to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the GA.