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.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, fearing that in the midst of the global financial crisis the rights of elderly women would fall by the wayside, was encouraging States parties to the women’s Convention to mainstream older women’s concerns into national strategies and development programmes, Committee Chairperson and expert from Egypt, Naela Mohamed Gabr, said this afternoon during a Headquarters press conference.
Security Council reform had come a long way since the beginning a new intergovernmental negotiation process in February, the facilitator on that issue in the General Assembly said at a Headquarters press conference today, announcing a third round of talks to begin on 27 August.
The head of the United Nations panel of climate-change experts today said he was encouraged by climate pledges at the recently concluded G-8 summit but was also concerned that “we have very little time” to reach even those general commitments, which still fell short of what was required by science.
States parties to the Rome Statute must strengthen cooperation with the International Criminal Court to arrest and bring to justice eight people charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity who remained on the run, the President of the assembly of signatory States said today.
While the activities of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown were expected to end in October, the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague, Netherlands, including appeals, was expected to run until February 2011, the Court’s Prosecutor, Stephen Rapp, said today at a Headquarters press conference.
Last week’s pledge by global leaders to mobilize $20 billion for sustainable agricultural development in three years was a major boon for food security worldwide, particularly as the World Food Programme (WFP) grappled with a major funding shortfall, the Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza and Coordinator of the High-level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis said today.
One hundred and forty-four days before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, countries still had some “formidable differences” to bridge in order to “seal a deal”, Janos Pasztor, Director of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, said at Headquarters today.
Emphasizing that the internal displacement crisis in Pakistan had reached a critical stage, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes today implored the international community to bolster aid to the more than 2 million people who had fled the conflict between Government forces and insurgents in the country’s North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan.
The fight against terrorism, important as it was, must be conducted in conformity with the rule of law and the principles of due process, the Chairman of the Security Council’s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee said at Headquarters today.