Armed groups recruiting child soldiers in Mali have capitalized on the desperation of impoverished families by offering large sums of money and free education, the author of a civil society report on the situation of children in the conflict-torn African nation said today at Headquarters.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
The world’s population, now estimated at 7.2 billion, could reach 8.1 billion by 2025 and up to 9.6 billion by 2050, said a top United Nations population expert at a Headquarters press conference today.
The world had become less peaceful in the past year, with Afghanistan at the bottom of the ranking and Syria being the “biggest ever faller”, experts said at a Headquarters press conference today upon the release of this year’s Global Peace Index.
Despite the progress made in 2012, new and ongoing conflicts posed grave dangers to children, said the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict at the launch of the Secretary-General’s annual report on the matter during a briefing at Headquarters today.
Pointing out that more than 11.4 million people were facing a daily food and nutrition crisis throughout West Africa’s Sahel region, the newly appointed United Nations Regional Coordinator for that area said that his priority was to close the financial gap that has left nearly two thirds of this year’s $1.7 billion Sahel appeal unfunded.
The nine men still wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda should not believe they have escaped justice, despite the conclusion of the court’s active phase, two high-ranking lawyers said at a Headquarters press conference today.
Rising sea levels, inundation of salt water and more frequent severe weather events had made life on some low-lying islands “untenable”, an anthropologist specializing in the peoples of the Pacific islands said at Headquarters today.
Experts from Mali and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization found the damage to the cultural heritage of Timbuktu more extensive than first estimated, senior officials of the country’s Government and the world body said today in Bamako and at New York Headquarters during a press conference.
Promoting the ethics and values of sport in youth was a strategic choice for Palestine, the President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee told reporters today at a Headquarters press conference.
The international humanitarian community faces an expanding and vastly underfunded portfolio of crises, both new and protracted, a senior United Nations humanitarian official said at a Headquarters press conference today.