Special Committee on Decolonization Elects New Chairman

While decolonization was a United Nations success story, that story was not yet finished, Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Special Committee on Decolonization today as it opened its 2004 session, adopting its work programme and electing officers, including its Chairman, Robert Guba Aisi. Describing colonialism as an anachronism in the twenty-first century, the Secretary-General said he hoped that in the year ahead, all administering powers would work with the Special Committee and with the people in the territories under their administration, to seek ways to further the decolonization process. The Special Committee on Decolonization was established by the General Assembly in 1961. It meets annually, hears appointed and elected representatives of Non-Self-Governing Territories and petitioners, dispatches visiting missions to those Territories, and organizes seminars on their political, social, economic and educational situations.
Left to right on the podium: Anna Theofilopoulou, Acting Chief of Decolonization Unit of Department of Political Affairs, Danilo Türk, Assistant Secretary-General of Department of Political Affairs, Secretary-Genral Kofi Annan, Robert Guba Aisi, Chairman of the Committee, Sergei Cherniavsky, Acting Secretary of the Committee, Chen Jian, Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management, and Fayssal Mekdad, Rapporteur of the Committee.