Press Conference

Nations meeting in Rio this month must come together on ambitious sustainable development goals backed by specific implementation agreements to ensure the survival of oceans, the decent subsistence of farmers whose fields were drying up and other urgent priorities, representatives of non-governmental organizations said this morning.

Cohesive global action was needed to support the world’s refugees and internally displaced people, whose numbers were rising dramatically due to an emerging “multiplication of factors”, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees today, as he launched the agency’s 2012 report.

Marking the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, the Organization’s top peacekeeping officials today paid tribute to the 112 blue helmets that had lost their lives in 2011 — as well as the 37 killed in the line of duty since the beginning of 2012 — and praised “blue helmets and blue berets” for effectively carrying out their duties in challenging security environments.

The concept of South-South cooperation was alive and well and moving into a more dynamic phase as Member States debated their ideas regarding which direction to take the concept going forward, the President of the United Nations High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation, John Ashe, said today at a Headquarters press conference in the lead-up to the launch of a South-South cooperation exchange mechanism by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The security situation in North and South Kivu remained generally volatile and with several armed groups operating in the region, continued fighting had resulted in significant displacement of civilians, both within Congo and across the border into Rwanda and Uganda, Roger Meece, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo said.

At a Headquarters press conference today Members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, both past and present, called on indigenous peoples everywhere to persevere, remain optimistic and remember that, while they have made much progress in the five years since the Indigenous Rights Declaration had been adopted, a lot of work still lay ahead.

Probably the most urgent activity for the Libyan authorities right now was for them to decide who among the “thousands” of prisoners filling up the country’s prisons as a result of allegations of crimes committed during the reign of former leader Muammar al-Qadhafi should be investigated or released, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, International Criminal Court Prosecutor told reporters today in New York.

While the United Nations and its partners would continue to provide immediate humanitarian relief to Afghanistan, aid alone was not enough to deal with the conflict-torn nation’s myriad challenges, the United Nations humanitarian chief said today during a Headquarters news conference.

Ahead of the General Assembly’s consideration tomorrow of the issue of enhancing the accountability, transparency and effectiveness of the Security Council, the World Federalist Movement and the Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP) today announced what it believed to be a major proposal recommending that the permanent members of the Security Council consider refraining from using a veto to block Council action aimed at preventing or ending genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Announcing two new arrest warrants for serious crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said this afternoon that action on the warrants was critical to help end massacres of civilians in the eastern Kivu provinces of the vast country.