Background Release

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:

NEW YORK, 8 June (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) — The twenty-seventh Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea will be held at Headquarters from 12 to 16 June.

The Special Committee on Decolonization will hold the 2017 Caribbean Regional Seminar in Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, from 16 to 18 May with a view to accelerating action in implementation of the Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism (2011-2020).

More than 1,000 indigenous participants from all over the world will be at United Nations Headquarters from 24 April to 5 May to attend the sixteenth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

NEW YORK, 22 March (Office for Disarmament Affairs) — Pursuant to General Assembly resolution 71/258, the United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination, will convene its first substantive session from 27 to 31 March at United Nations Headquarters.

NEW YORK, 30 January (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) ― The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf will hold its forty-third session from 30 January to 17 March.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene the United Nations Round Table on the Question of Palestine at the Holiday Inn–Convention Centre in Managua, Nicaragua, on 4 February.

NEW YORK, 14 October (Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea) — The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf will hold its forty-second session from 17 October to 2 December.

The third annual International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Tests will be observed on 26 September at United Nations Headquarters. 

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message at the “Making Every Woman and Girl Count” event, in New York today: