Press Conference


Stevie Wonder, the popular singer and Grammy Award-winning songwriter, promised to use his creative talents in support of the United Nations mission and persons with disabilities during a press conference at Headquarters today.
Poised to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary on 18 December, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was today lauded by women’s rights advocates for enabling human rights defenders over the last thirty years to successfully demand change in laws that discriminated against women.
The world economy will rebound and grow by 2.4 per cent next year, officials from the United Nations said today in a report launched at Headquarters, while warning that the recovery was brittle and depended on continued stimulus measures.
Burkina Faso, December’s President of the Security Council, had organized an open debate on “drug trafficking as a threat to international security” on 8 December, that country’s Permanent Representative Michel Kafando said today at Headquarters.
Gender violence and gender inequality were the principal drivers behind the spread of AIDS throughout the Pacific region, according to a report launched today at United Nations Headquarters by the independent Commission on AIDS in the Pacific.
During a press conference today to update reporters on the upcoming multi-year renovation of United Nation Headquarters in New York City, Assistant Secretary-General Michael Adlerstein said about 3,300 people had been moved out of the Secretariat Building and that the temporary North Lawn building would be ready for occupancy by the end of December.
An AIDS-free generation was now in sight, but progress around the world had been extremely uneven, marked by huge deficiencies in preventing transmission of the disease, said Jimmy Kolker, Chief of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) HIV and AIDS Section, as he presented a new joint report on the impacts of the pandemic on children at a Headquarters press conference today.
According to an agreement with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the United Nations would be able to conduct surprise visits to SPLA camps in Sudan to verify the presence of child soldiers, said Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, who added that such dialogue might begin for similar action plans with other participants in the Darfur peace process.
Expressing anger at the United States Government’s expanded presence at seven military bases in Colombia, the Venezuelan Government had asked the Security Council to place an examination of Colombia’s armed conflict on its work agenda, its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Jorge Valero Briceño, told correspondents today at a Headquarters press conference.