Press Conference

While it was currently seized with the ongoing situation in Syria and a range of issues around the world, the Security Council’s main focus in February would be a members’ mission to Haiti, according to the Permanent Representative of Togo, which holds the body’s rotating presidency for the month.

The top priority for UN Women in 2012 would be a renewed push for women’s economic empowerment and political participation as change was demanded in the Arab world and elsewhere, the Head of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women told correspondents at headquarters this morning.

South Africa had achieved its objective of focusing the Security Council’s attention this month on a number of important and pressing Africa-related issues, Council President and South Africa’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Baso Sangqu, said during a Headquarters news conference this afternoon. “We are satisfied with the progress we have made during this presidency,”Mr.Sangqu said.

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference, held in New York on 25 January:

Calling strongly today for an end to the deadly tit-for-tat violence between two of South Sudan’s main nomadic tribes, the top United Nations official for the fledgling country condemned with equal vigour the ongoing use of hate speech to sow seeds of ethnic division in the flashpoint region of Jonglei.

The international response to the 2011 famine in Somalia had had a “tremendous impact” in reducing mortality and raising nutritional well-being, but the fragility of the situation had led to a record humanitarian appeal this year, the top United Nations relief official in the country said today.

With climate change promising to be one of the biggest factors in global investment for the foreseeable future, investors were changing the way in which they did business and catalysing new energy solutions along the way, experts said at Headquarters today.

The voices of more than 80 per cent of the world’s population — represented at the United Nations by the “Group of 77” developing countries and China — would be heard loudly in 2012, Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said today at a Headquarters press conference after his country took over the bloc’s chairmanship.

The Security Council would hold five briefings, 11 closed consultations and three formal debates in January, covering the Middle East, justice and the rule of law, and cooperation between the United Nations and the African Union, according to the programme of work outlined by Council President Baso Sangqu (South Africa) at Headquarters today.

In the face of inter-ethnic conflict, the Government of South Sudan, supported by the locally based United Nations Mission, had taken decisive steps to evacuate civilians and deter spiralling violence, a senior official of the world body said at a Headquarters press conference today.