Despite the prevailing global financial woes, the financial situation of the United Nations had undergone an overall improvement in 2011, with all its funds enjoying positive cash balances and a drop in the debt it owed to Member States expected by year’s end, the world body’s top management official said at Headquarters today.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
Much progress had been made in establishing normative and legal frameworks required to fight discrimination and violence against women, but implementation of those frameworks, as well as necessary social transformation, lagged far behind, United Nations experts told correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon.
The work of Nobel Peace Prize recipients, Liberian President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf and peace activists Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman, embodied exactly what Alfred Nobel had in mind for the Prize, a senior United Nations rights advocate said today at a Headquarters press conference.
In the 10 years since its creation, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) had helped countries improve their agriculture, infrastructure and health sectors, and future priorities now centred on working with regional economic communities to further increase the continent’s engagement with the international community, top United Nations and regional officials said today at a Headquarters press briefing.
At his last Headquarters press conference before the end of a three-year term as United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Michael Williams said today that his departure came at a time of profound change and tumult in the Middle East and that his ardent wish was for democracy to flourish as real peace took hold in the region.
Pro-life Government, academic, legal and civil society representatives presented at Headquarters today a new declaration intended to help Governments guarantee the rights of unborn children and reject pressure to adopt laws that would legalize or de-criminalize abortion.
Saying she expected a “good ride” for the Security Council this month, U. Joy Ogwu (Nigeria), its President for October, today outlined a programme of work comprising a varied mix of both new and routine agenda items. Briefing at a Headquarters press conference, she said that since the world was not static but dynamic, the work programme allowed for the addition of new items, to be dealt with as and when they arose.
As the focus in Haiti turned to long-term recovery and development, significant humanitarian needs still had to be addressed, with 600,000 people remaining homeless after last year’s earthquake, the United Nations top humanitarian official said this afternoon, following a two-day visit to the country.
The “path-breaking” 2006 Millennium Villages initiative was now the largest scale project to achieve the Millennium Development Goals through an integrated rural development approach in sub-Saharan Africa, Jeffrey Sachs said today at the launch of the project’s second phase, for which George Soros had pledged an extra $47 million.
The United Nations, as part of its ongoing effort to bolster international law and strengthen the rule of law, will host its annual treaty event from 20 to 22 September and 26 to 27 September on the margins of the General Assembly’s general debate, top legal officers said today at a Headquarters press conference.