The Secretary-General, opening the high-level session of the twenty-first Conference of the Parties (COP21) just outside of Paris, told ministers and negotiators representing 196 parties that their task was to translate this historic call for action into a durable, credible and fair climate agreement.
In progress at UNHQ
Noon Briefings
The UN refugee agency says that recent fighting in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria region between local groups and the army has displaced more than 4,000 people into a remote region of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. UNHCR has registered almost 3,500 newly arrived refugees in areas near the border.
At the Paris Climate Change Conference, new international partnerships were unveiled. They include early warning systems for more than 50 of the least developed countries and small island States, as well as access to insurance for more than 400 million people in the most vulnerable countries.
Welcoming an announcement by the Government of Thailand that it has granted statehood to more than 18,000 people in the last three years, the United Nations refugee agency says this marks an important further step in the global campaign to end statelessness by 2024.
This morning in Paris, the Secretary-General told leaders gathered for the twenty-first Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference that they were here to write the script for a new future. He added that a political moment like this may not come again.
Marking International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and UN-Women’s launch of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, the Secretary-General said that ending violence against women and girls is a top priority of the United Nation’s mission of peace, development and human rights.
The Special Envoy for Syria met today with delegations from Syrian armed opposition groups. He briefed the delegates on the outcomes reached by the International Syria Support Group, including the close linkage between a ceasefire and a parallel political process pursuant to the 2012 Geneva Communiqué.
Our colleagues in South Sudan say the situation there continues to deteriorate. Humanitarian agencies report that an estimated 7.5 million people are now food insecure and an unprecedented malaria outbreak is affecting nearly all the states. Over 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict began.
The Secretary-General condemns the deadly terrorist attack at the Radisson hotel in Bamako, Mali. He expresses his full support to the Government in their fight against terrorist and extremist groups.
On World Toilet Day, UNICEF, USAIDS and the World Health Organization issued a new report that brings together for the first time research and case studies showing the link between sanitation and malnutrition. Some 2.4 billion people globally do not have toilets and roughly one in eight still defecates in the open.