Press Conference

As authorities in Guinea-Bissau struggled to ensure social and political stability following a wave of high-profile political assassinations, the situation was “calm, but extremely fragile”, the top United Nations envoy in the country said today as he urged the international community to step up its support for planned reforms in “every sector, because every sector has critical needs”.

Voicing the interests of civil society a day before the United Nations begins a three-day summit on the world financial crisis, the Global Social Economy Group called today for sweeping reform of international financial and economic institutions and practices that had contributed to the current global economic turmoil.

Negotiations on the long-debated outcome document for the United Nations summit on the world financial crisis, which begins tomorrow, had come to a successful conclusion, General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann announced this morning at a Headquarters press conference.

The United Nations should be the place that “educates the innocent and the victims” on how to deal with the world economic and financial crisis, Martin Khor, Executive Director of South Centre, said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

Flagging sickle-cell anaemia as one of the world’s most common but most misunderstood health problems, a panel featuring African health ministers and medical professionals urged Governments, health workers and even families to use 19 June as an opportunity to raise awareness of sickle-cell anaemia in order to “bring this disease out of the shadows” and help improve the quality of life for people living with it.

Energy was central to all aspects of development, the Ambassador of Belarus said today, urging United Nations Member States to bridge the current “energy divide” by, among other things, creating a global mechanism to ensure that all countries, especially developing nations and transition economies, gained fair and adequate access to technologies for new and renewable sources of energy.

Gilles Noghès, Permanent Representative of Monaco to the United Nations, announced today the launching of the €10,000 joint Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation/UNCA (United Nations Correspondents Association) Global Prize for the best coverage of climate change issues. The Prize, the first in that field, would be awarded by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon next 30 October, during the UNCA Gala Dinner, Mr. Noghès said at a Headquarters press conference.

Strategies to promote clean, renewable energy, especially in the developing world, where poor communities remained heavily reliant on wood and charcoal for most of their fuel, must be included in the global climate change deal expected to be reached in Copenhagen in December, Kandeh Yumkella, Chairman of the Secretary-General’s newly-launched Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, said at Headquarters today.

While natural hazards were unavoidable, especially given the growing threat of climate change, they only became disasters when they exceeded community coping mechanisms, according to the World Disasters Report 2009 of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Following is a transcript of a joint press conference by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Special Envoy for Haiti, William J. Clinton, held today in New York: