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.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
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.
The problems in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo had no single solution, but required a combination of efforts to deal with protection of civilians and integration into the national army of armed groups, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative said today at a Headquarters press conference.
In response to the announcement that leaders of the Major Economies Forum had agreed to hold rising temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) today reaffirmed its call for short- and medium-term targets that would limit increases to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.