General Policy Debate

The General Policy Debate will take place from Wednesday, 10 November morning to Monday, 15 November afternoon. It will be followed, at the end of the afternoon of Monday, 15 November, by the Director-General's reply.

For the consecutive statements of the General Policy Debate, the procedure followed since 2003 (165 EX/Decision 7.1) for drawing up the list of speakers will also be followed at the 41st session. Immediately after the 211th session of the Board, Member States are invited to submit to the Secretariat, within a time limit of one month, several dates for the statement by their head of delegation in the General Policy Debate, indicating their preferences and specifying name and title of same. On that basis, a provisional list of speakers will be drawn up, taking the wishes expressed and the speakers’ protocol rank into account. Speaking time will be six minutes, and a visual and sound system will gauge speaking time; the President of the General Conference will be empowered to interrupt any speaker exceeding the time limit.

Delegations shall be asked to provide the official statements (short or extended versions, according to their wish) in advance to the Secretariat of the General Conference. Each Member State is requested to submit an electronic copy of the head of delegation’s statement, if possible in English and French (working languages of the Secretariat) as well as in the original language if this is one of the four other working languages of the General Conference. These texts will be posted every day online on the General Conference’s website. Costs related to any necessary translation of this text would be borne by the concerned Member State, as is the case in the United Nations General Assembly