PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL ENVOY FOR HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA

Following yesterday’s two gloomy reports on the HIV/AIDS pandemic worldwide, Stephen Lewis, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for HIV/AIDS in Africa, today told correspondents at a Headquarters briefing that the scourge in Africa was now “conclusively and irreversibly a ferocious assault on women and girls”.

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNAIDS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

The bad news was that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was still at the early stage of its expansion and the good news was that efforts to stem it were not business as usual, Dr. Peter Piot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, said today upon the release of a new report on the issue.

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNITED NATIONS AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES

HEADQUARTERS PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESIDENT OF SECURITY COUNCIL

The Security Council wanted the business of peacekeeping to proceed without interruption and would make every effort to avoid problems like that affecting the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom, told correspondents this afternoon.

HEADQUARTERS PRESS BRIEFING BY PRESIDENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL

The President of the Economic and Social Council, Ivan Simonovic, briefing correspondents at Headquarters today, said that the message of the High-level Council segment should centre on building on the achievements of Monterrey and making Johannesburg a success.

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME PRESS CONFERENCE LAUNCHING EMERGENCY APPEAL

FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today launched a massive appeal to provide emergency food relief to six countries in southern Africa, where some 12.8 million people are threatened with starvation over the next nine months.

PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY-GENERAL’S SPECIAL ADVISER

ON MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT

Some 60 per cent of the people displaced in the conflict between the Russian Federation and insurgents in its constituent republic of Chechnya were children, Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT SPONSORED BY CANADA

The entire global legal environment will be different at midnight on Monday 1 July when the Rome Statute goes into force, a representative of the NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court said this morning at a Headquarters press conference sponsored by Canada’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

PRESS BRIEFING BY DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS

In an inauspicious start to the new millennium, the turnaround in the world economy, following a precipitous decline in growth in 2001, was not expected to be either rapid or synchronized in 2002, Ian C. Kinniburgh, Director of the Development Policy Analysis Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told correspondents this morning.