Press Conference

Following is a transcript of UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson’s press conference held in New York, 19 July:

For humanitarian assistance to be effective, disaster prevention and preparedness needed to be incorporated into international responses to humanitarian needs, stated Lydia Poole, Programme Leader of Global Humanitarian Assistance, at the launch today of the 2012 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report at a Headquarters press conference.

Saturday’s elections in Libya, the country’s first free vote in more than four decades, were an “extraordinary achievement”, but they also highlighted some of the tough challenges ahead, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative said at Headquarters today.

Despite a perceived lack of concrete commitments, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development — Rio+20 — brought forward an international consensus on the way ahead, a panel of national, civil society and United Nations officials agreed at a Headquarters press conference today.

The action plan signed last week by the United Nations and the Government of Myanmar to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers by that country’s armed forces promised to set the war-torn nation’s children on the right path, the Organization’s senior official on the rights of children in armed conflict said today at a Headquarters press conference.

With donors slashing development aid due to the global economic crisis, the United Nations is proposing international taxes and other innovative financing mechanisms to raise more than $400 billion annually to meet global priorities like fighting climate change and meeting the Millennium Development Goals, according to the Organization’s annual global development report, released at Headquarters today.

With the crises in Syria and Mali, a broad reassessment of peacebuilding schedules and many peacekeeping mandates coming to term, July looks very busy for the Security Council, the Permanent Representative of Colombia, which will hold the 15‑member body’s rotating presidency for that month, said today.

Global labour leaders unveiled at Headquarters today a comprehensive, multipronged strategy aimed at tackling the global youth unemployment crisis, which has already put 75 million young people worldwide on the unemployment line and forced more than 200 million to work for less than $2 a day.

The high-level segment of this year’s Economic and Social Council substantive session will focus on productive capacity, employment, decent work and development cooperation, the President of that main United Nations organ said at a Headquarters press conference today.

Fashion design and production could provide a major platform for sustainable development in Africa, the Secretary-General’s Millennium Development Goals Advocate said today at a Headquarters press conference to introduce Fashion 4 Development, an initiative created with the aim of mobilizing the industry to support attainment of the targets.