While Sierra Leone was emerging as a remarkable success story for post-conflict reconstruction, it still required sustained support in order to complete that process, especially in enhancing the role of civil society, women in particular, the head of the Peacebuilding Commission’s configuration for the West African country said today at Headquarters.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
The transatlantic slave trade was a tragedy of immense proportions that had inflicted untold suffering on millions of people for more than four centuries, a crime against humanity that deserved solemn — and prominent — recognition at United Nations Headquarters, “lest we forget”, said Raymond Wolfe, Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United Nations, at a press conference today in New York.
The Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia has agreed on the urgent need to adopt a comprehensive approach to combating the scourge and its causes, the Permanent Representative of Turkey, Chairperson of the Group, told correspondents this afternoon.
Intensified humanitarian commitments were needed as the situation in Côte d’Ivoire and neighbouring Liberia continued to deteriorate, top United Nations officials said at a Headquarters press conference today. “The humanitarian crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is very serious and it is getting worse,” said Ndolamb Ngokwey, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the West African nation.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, next June, would give the international community a unique opportunity to build a global economic development model aimed at improving people’s lives and ensuring social equity while reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcity, the event’s Secretary-General said today.
The Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety was a “major breakthrough” in global environmental negotiations, correspondents were told today at a Headquarters press conference held after the new treaty was opened for signature.
The United Nations and its international humanitarian partner agencies were steadily ramping up efforts to assist civilians affected by violent clashes in Libya, the Organization’s Emergency Relief Coordinator said during a Headquarters press conference today, just hours before she headed to North Africa to assess the situation first-hand.
As delegates geared up for next year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Secretary-General of that event called on them today to use that gathering to take collective action to save societies from mounting social tensions, ecological damage and the global economic crisis.
Marketing deadly designer drugs online under innocuous names like “ivory wave” bath salts or plant food, drug dealers were turning hefty profits by selling to young people worldwide — a practice which the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) was working hard to end — one of its members said during a Headquarters news conference today.
A comprehensive strategy for Somalia and newly emergent crises in Africa would be among the priority issues to be considered during China’s March presidency of the Security Council, that country’s Permanent Representative told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference. “We cannot have a piecemeal solution,” Li Baodong said of Somalia, which would be the subject of an open debate on 10 March. He said that the situation remained very disturbing and deserved constant attention.