Updating the press on the latest developments regarding the work of the sixty-fifth General Assembly, Joseph Deiss, the 192-member body’s President, today highlighted a host of upcoming topical debates and took questions on the push for Palestinian statehood, as well as on the status of the negotiations to reform and expand the Security Council.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
Forest loss was accelerating across forest basins in the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong regions, areas that together comprised 80 per cent of the world’s tropical forests, were home to two thirds of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and provided livelihoods to more than 1 billion people, Henri Djombo, Minister of Sustainable Development, Forests and Environment of the Congo, said today, announcing that his country would soon host a high-level summit to generate solutions.
With attacks on humanitarian workers increasing, aid organizations must return to core neutrality principles and negotiate safe access with all parties rather than abandoning the victims of conflict, according to a United Nations report launched this afternoon at Headquarters. “There are no places on earth where humanitarian organizations should not go or can not go,” Jan Egeland, former Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said as he introduced the study that he had co-authored.
With Côte d’Ivoire gripped by violence and political uncertainty, a senior United Nations human rights official today said that it was essential to break the cycle of impunity and retaliation that had taken root in the West African country, and he admonished the international community for failing to take concrete steps following the 2002 civil war to ensure accountability as a way to ward off future instability.
As fighting continued to rage in Libya, top humanitarian priorities there were bringing about at least a temporary ceasefire and acquiring additional civilian assistance for the aid effort, a United Nations humanitarian official said this afternoon.
Over the tragic 30-year arc of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, solid progress had been made in raising awareness about the disease and bringing down infection rates, but monies devoted to tackling it were drying up, the price of the drugs to treat it were skyrocketing, and rampant discrimination had left at the margins of life-saving interventions communities critical to the fight, civil society representatives said at a Headquarters press conference today.
With the successful conclusion in Haiti of legislative and presidential elections signalling renewal and the rise of a new political generation, there were solid reasons for optimism about the country’s future, nearly 15 months after the devastating earthquake, Edmond Mulet, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Haiti, said today at a Headquarters press conference.
Aid to thousands of civilians across Côte d’Ivoire was running out as “extremely serious human rights violations” continued unabated, said the United Nations top humanitarian officer at a Headquarters press conference today.
Néstor Osorio, Permanent Representative of Colombia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council, said today that the 15-nation body would tackle a “loaded” agenda this month, while also keeping a wary eye on the ripple effects of the popular protests sweeping North African and the Middle East.
Recent talks had brought Georgia and the Russian Federation no closer to ending their longstanding political stalemate, said a top Georgian official, speaking at a Headquarters press conference today. The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Georgia, Grigol Vashadze, said that “no substantial breakthroughs” had been made at the just-concluded fifteenth round of the negotiations, first launched in Geneva following a military conflict in 2008.