As diverse demands for United Nations peacekeeping continued to grow, more than 14,000 United Nations police officers — a force that was increasingly specialized and increasingly female — were deployed around the world, said the United Nations top police officer at a Headquarters press conference today.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
It was critical for the outcome of the 2011 Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Convention to make operational the agreements reached last year in Cancun, but also to move forward on all aspects of the climate-change agenda, according to the Foreign Minister of South Africa, where the Conference will be held.
An estimated 30 per cent of those requiring humanitarian assistance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was not being reached, said a top United Nations humanitarian official today at a New York Headquarters press conference, urging the international community to take steps towards improving access in that central African nation.
Paul De Lay, Deputy Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) hailed the world body’s expected adoption later today of a comprehensive strategy charting the global response to the deadly virus, including a commitment to halving sexual transmission of HIV by 2015, and a broader pledge to work towards increasing funding to tackle HIV/AIDS to between $22 billion and $24 billion per year by that time.
Introducing the student leaders of the 2011 Global Model United Nations Conference, planned for Incheon, Republic of Korea, 10-14 August, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information said today that such events helped mobilize students to engage in United Nations issues.
Strong political decisions were needed to ensure the execution of the International Criminal Court warrants for the arrest of President Omer al-Bashir of Sudan and other powerful Government figures, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said at a Headquarters press conference today. “Our warrants are not going away,” he said, following his briefing to the Security Council on the situation in Sudan.
Environmental protection rules needed much more rigorous enforcement, and it was to be hoped that next year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) would take a holistic approach to incorporating “green economy” into an oceans-oriented agenda, whereby important marine-based resources could be thought of in terms of a “blue economy”, according to David Freestone, Lobingier Visiting Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at George Washington University.
Tackling the myriad challenges posed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic required less finger-pointing about which Governments had not met their commitments and more sincere efforts to promote global cooperation and secure new and innovative sources of funding, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of Nigeria said today. “The only issue is that we are not receiving what we were supposed to receive,” he said at a press conference held after the opening of the General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS.
With the corporate world increasingly aligning itself with the goals of the United Nations, the Organization enjoyed growing private-sector support as well as more partnership activities on the ground to address key initiatives relating to health, poverty reduction and the environment, Georg Kell, Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, said today at Headquarters.
Actress and Grammy-nominated singer Melba Moore said at Headquarters today that she would engage the corporate world, the media and fellow celebrities in carrying out her duties as a new United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Permanent Memorial to honour the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.