Since its inception more than sixty years ago, the United Nations General Assembly has been a forum for lofty declarations, sometimes audacious rhetoric, and debate over the world's most vexing issues, from poverty to peace and security. In the 2009 session, attention will likely focus on the global economic crisis, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and global health issues. As the deliberative and representative organ of the United Nations, the assembly holds general debate in the UN's New York headquarters from September to December, with special sessions convened thereafter as required.

Policy debate could also take place in the delegates' lounge over Iran's nuclear ambitions and the Middle East peace process, as the United States attempts to invigorate talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. The sixty-fourth assembly president is Dr. Ali Abdessalam Treki, who has outlined themes for the session, including "the reform of the UN, environment, the international financial situation, social issues, disarmament, education, [and] diseases."

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the only universally representative body of the five principal organs of the United Nations. The other major bodies are the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice. As delineated in the Charter of the United Nations, the function of the General Assembly is to discuss, debate, and make recommendations on a range of subjects pertaining to international peace and security - including disarmament, human rights, international law, and peaceful arbitration between disputing nations. It elects the nonpermanent members of the Security Council and other bodies such as the Human Rights Council, and appoints the secretary-general based on the Security Council's recommendation. It considers reports from the other four organs of the United Nations, assesses the financial situations of member states, and approves the UN budget - its most concrete role. The Assembly also works with the Security Council to elect the judges of the International Court of Justice.

The General Assembly is the only part of the United Nations that represents all 192 member states, each of which has one vote. In addition, the UN's nonmember observer states, which include the Vatican and the Palestinian Authority, have the right to speak at assembly meetings but cannot vote on resolutions. Resolutions need a two-thirds majority to pass. Often voting blocs are formed around groups such as the G-77, a loose coalition of member states from the developing world. The assembly's president changes with each annual session. Ali Abdessalam Treki was elected  president of the sixty-fourth session in June 2009, having served three times as Libya's ambassador to the United Nations. As president, Treki's priorities for the sixty-fourth session are poverty and human rights issues as a means to promote international peace and security. "Freedom and human rights in social, economic and cultural terms--rights to food, to housing, to education and health care --these are all extremely important issues that have to do with our peace and security," he says. Moreover, he has emphasized the need to formulate a more influential assembly, with greater responsibilities and power, so it can effectively respond to the growing challenges that it faces.

Yes, say many UN experts and leading donor nations. Efforts towards revitalizing its work have been ongoing for many years. Key motivating factors (PDF) are considered to be increasing the power of the assembly vis-à-vis the Security Council, as well as making debates more constructive and less repetitive. But, the assembly has continued to resist deep-seated reforms, a reflection of the rift between its many members from the developing world, who want to retain a strong say in its deliberations, and wealthy nations that serve as its main donors. Small improvements do take place, however. In April 2007, the General Assembly, for the first time in sixty years, mandated a significant overhaul of the UN system of internal justice, declaring it "slow, cumbersome, ineffective and lacking in professionalism."  The new system, which became functional in 2009, formally established a mediation division within the UN. The Internal Justice Council has already begun interviewing potential judges to ensure their independence.

In 2005, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a report that criticized the assembly for focusing excessively on consensus and passing resolutions that reflected "the lowest common denominator" of opinions. Michael W. Doyle, an international affairs expert who teaches at Columbia University, says the assembly is "an important institution that has never quite sorted out its role" in terms of being a truly deliberative, functional body, and has "insufficient deliberation and not enough genuine discussion." Doyle, who was an aide to Annan, says that the assembly could enhance its relevance by holding hearings with expert testimony. The assembly has made an effort in recent years to make its work more substantive and relevant. Resolution 59/313, adopted in 2005, established a more influential role for the assembly's president to help achieve this goal.

The General Assembly has the power of censuring states for violating UN Charter principles. In the 1960s the assembly refused to seat the South African delegations because the country was practicing apartheid, in violation of both Security Council resolutions and principles of international law. In 1992, the assembly refused to give Serbia the former Yugoslavian seat in the assembly. Belgrade later was given representation under the name of Yugoslavia.

Separately, Israel for many years was barred from serving on UN commissions and panels because Arab states blocked it from meeting with the Mideast regional group at the United Nations. This changed in 2000 when Israel was permitted into another regional group.

"The General Assembly is not an action body. It is just that - an assembly," says Ambassador Donald McHenry, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. On some issues, such as the U.S.  embargo on Cuba, resolutions get passed every year, but have yet to stir policy change. General Assembly resolutions are still significant, however, as indicators of Member States' positions on a given issue. They can also prove useful by outlining organizing principles and proposing initiatives for Member States, says McHenry. Some assembly actions have had more influence or incited more opposition than others:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948, two years after the assembly convened its inaugural session, it promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which contained thirty articles stating the UN's view on human rights. A historic act, it proclaimed the "inherent dignity" and "equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family." The assembly called for the act to be "disseminated, displayed, read, and expounded" in the schools and educational institutions of all member countries. As the Chair of the UN's Commission on Human Rights, former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped to draft and pass the declaration, saying it "may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere." Human rights issues remain contentious, however.
• "Uniting for Peace" Resolution. In 1950, the United States initiated another landmark resolution of the General Assembly, Resolution 377 (PDF), known as the "Uniting for Peace" Resolution. It states that if the UN Security Council "fails to exercise its primary responsibility" of maintaining international peace and security, the General Assembly can and should take up the matter itself and urge member states to consider collective action. The assembly has enacted this resolution in a handful of instances, including the Suez crisis of 1956. As a result of its intervention there, a ceasefire was called, a withdrawal occurred, and the first United States Emergency Force (USEF), a peacekeeping force, was established. The U.S.-initiated war with Iraq provoked calls from a number of organizations, including the legal advocacy organization the Center for Constitutional Rights, to have the General Assembly take up the issue and override the impasse of the Security Council, but the assembly has not done so.
• Millennium Declaration. The General Assembly proclaimed that its fifty-fifth session in 2000 would be designated the Millennium Assembly. At a summit that year, Annan unveiled the UN's Millennium Declaration. It set forth what are known as the Millennium Development Goals, a collection of "time-bound and measurable" targets for combating everything from poverty to HIV/AIDS. Other key proposals included a security agenda relating to international law, peace operations, and small arms trafficking; and an environmental agenda that urged "a new ethic of conservation and stewardship." The development goals continue to be invoked by many governments, NGOs, and other groups as a way to spur more aid towards the developing world.
• 'Zionism is Racism' Resolution of 1975. Also known as Resolution 3379, this is the assembly's most controversial resolution, in which it "determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." Yet the UN Partition Plan for Palestine approved of and helped create the state of Israel in 1947. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on the day the resolution was passed, Israeli ambassador Chaim Herzog stated that "For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value." He then proceeded to tear it in half. Resolution 3379 was eventually repealed, in 1991.