Meetings Coverage

The holding of peaceful, credible elections, protection of civilians, regional stabilization, control of mineral resources and security-sector reform presented the major challenges in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the coming year, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative told the Security Council this morning.

Women and girls bore a disproportionate burden of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and if Governments were serious about halting the disease in the next decade, they must throw their political weight squarely behind that issue by urgently expanding sexual and reproductive health services, legislating gender equality, and understanding that no gains would be made without ending violence against women, said participants today in a General Assembly panel discussion on “Women, girls and HIV”.

Innovative drugs, diagnostics, vaccines and microbicides to treat HIV infection must be developed urgently and made readily available worldwide, particularly to sex workers, homosexual men, intravenous drug users and others who needed them most, participants said this morning during a panel discussion held in connection with this week’s United Nations high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS.

Calling for a “prevention revolution” on the second day of the General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, ministers and other high-ranking Government officials stressed that programmes to combat the disease must be mainstreamed into national health systems during the next phase of the global response to the pandemic, while emphasizing that those directly affected must be included in the search for solutions.

Genocide and crimes against humanity continued unabated in Darfur because the President of Sudan had learned to defy the Security Council’s authority, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told Council members today. Luis Moreno-Ocampo said during his briefing on Sudan that the crimes in question included air attacks on civilians as well as the direct killing of members of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

The tragic 30-year arc of the AIDS virus, which had left in its wake some 30 million people dead, nearly as many struggling to live with the disease and vast numbers of orphans, had likewise left the international community scrambling to answer a host of complex questions, such as how to accelerate targeted prevention interventions, and perhaps most critically, what can be done stop new infections.

Ten years after the world community had come together to forge the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, participants in the first of five panels scheduled during this week’s three-day United Nations high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS called for a new paradigm in AIDS response that focused not only on the disease, but championed broader social development, supported the establishment of robust national health systems and, most importantly, responded to those without a voice.

After three decades, the global fight against AIDS was at a moment of truth and Governments, civil society and the private sector must come together to ensure that past commitments to achieve universal access to life-saving treatments were met and that the elusive pandemic was stopped in its tracks in the coming decade, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared today as he opened the General Assembly High-level Meeting on AIDS, which aimed to shape the future global response.

Reaffirming its previous commitment to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic as a threat to international peace and security, the Security Council this morning encouraged the incorporation of HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in the implementation of peacekeeping mandates. Resolution 1983 (2011), building on the first Council action on HIV/AIDS, resolution 1308 (2000), was adopted unanimously in a meeting presided by Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba.

It was critical for the parties in both North and South Sudan to reach accord on all outstanding issues under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement before the South declared independence on 9 July, the Security Council heard today, as the leaders of its recent mission to Africa briefed members on the visit.