Senior United Nations Police officials today praised the work being carried out by female police officers in the world body’s peacekeeping missions, and urged Member States to deploy more women, who added a much-needed and unique perspective to police units, especially in building trust and serving as role models for local women and girls.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
While the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue a warrant for the arrest of the President of Sudan had made the peace process more difficult and challenging, it had not really dislocated operations or had a drastic effect on the ground, General Martin Luther Agwai, Force Commander of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) said at Headquarters today.
The Security Council would meet this afternoon to adopt a resolution on children and armed conflict and it would renew by month’s end the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) set to expire on 31 August, John Sawers, Council President for August and the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, said today during a Headquarters news conference.
Ahead of the Security Council’s adoption of a groundbreaking resolution on children and armed conflict, the top United Nations official on the issue, Radhika Coomaraswamy, and Claude Heller, Permanent Representative of Mexico, today hailed the resolution as a major step forward in the fight against impunity for crimes against children.
SG/SM/12389
Following is the transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's press conference held in New York today:
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia, said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon that the Security Council was in closed-door meetings to discuss possible new sanctions against leaders of armed groups in Somalia, and perhaps Eritrea, and that tackling impunity was the next major concern in Somalia.
The old United Nations internal justice system had finally given out, and for the first time, staff had fair and independent judges to whom they could take their problems, and whose decisions would be binding on management, Geoffrey Robertson of the “Redesign Panel” said at a Headquarters press conference today.
Karin Landgren, Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), said today that, although the peace process had stagnated to a degree, she hoped that party leaders would rise above their differences and work together pragmatically, through consensus and dialogue to advance the process, as they had done in the past.
With the General Assembly holding its first ever thematic debate on the responsibility to protect populations from genocide or other war crimes, a diverse panel of academics struggled today during a press conference to find common ground on how the concept, seen by some developing nations as a Western ploy to meddle in their domestic affairs, could ever be fairly or effectively applied.
Angela Kane, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Management, today appealed to both diplomats and staff at United Nations Headquarters in New York to help implement the General Assembly decision of a smoke-free United Nations premises by observing the smoking ban at United Nations Headquarters.