After 15 years of international efforts, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had emerged from civil war into a unified country, with a clear, shared and celebrated identity, and free of much of the terror of armed groups, the United Nations most senior official in that country told the Security Council today in a message laced with caution that the overall security situation was not still stable, let alone irreversible.
The Security Council today expressed deep concern at recent incidents across the Blue Line and in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) area of operations, underlining that such events could lead to a new conflict that “none of the parties — or the region — can afford” and urging all parties to abide “scrupulously” by their obligation to respect the Force’s safety.
Like the Millennium Development Goals, progress on gender mainstreaming remained uneven across a landscape of United Nations functional commissions and work remained to be done to galvanize meaningful change in the post-2015 era, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today during interactive discussions on the penultimate day of its two-week annual session.
All people — no matter who they are — must benefit from development and be given opportunities to contribute to its design, implementation and monitoring, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today, concluding its general debate and addressing the impact of discrimination on marginalized women and girls.
SENDAI, JAPAN, 18 March — Death and destruction from earthquakes, extreme weather and other hazards around the world would be decreased significantly by 2030 according to goals set today by countries meeting at the Third World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction, which closed this evening in Sendai, Japan.
After months of political deadlock, Haiti’s holding of free, transparent and inclusive elections this year in “an atmosphere of calm” was an essential condition for achieving stability, democratic governance and development, the top United Nations official there told the Security Council today, as delegates debated plans to reduce the United Nations peacekeeping presence in the Caribbean nation.
During a mission to Africa last week, the Security Council held wide-ranging exchanges with key stakeholders in the peace processes in the Central African Republic and Burundi, witnessing progress and challenges on the ground, and discussed ways of bolstering the partnership between the United Nations and the African Union to ensure broader stability and development in the continent.
Over the last year, the situation in Darfur had “deteriorated significantly”, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations told the Security Council today, urging the 15-member body and the African Union to step up pressure on parties to start direct negotiations towards ceasing hostilities — the first step on a path to lasting peace in the restive Sudanese region.
SENDAI, JAPAN, 17 March — Public investment had substantial strategic, operational and tactical benefits for disaster risk reduction, as it could increase resilience, save lives and accelerate recovery of devastated homes, institutions and infrastructure, the Sendai World Conference heard today during its fifth and final ministerial round table.
Gender-sensitive, disaggregated data must be an integral part of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda and no longer treated as an “afterthought”, the Commission on the Status of Women heard today as statistical experts took centre stage.
