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.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
A search committee is poised to launch a “rigorous” and “novel” selection process for the next top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said officials close to the Court at a Headquarters press conference today.
The United Nations top humanitarian official told reporters today that while the world body’s marquee relief agencies were ramping up activities in the eastern part of Libya and along the country’s southern and western borders, she was very concerned that fighting in and around Tripoli was preventing a tangible assessment of the humanitarian needs there.
Stressing the urgent need to extend basic schooling to all children, representatives of the United Nations and civil society organizations this afternoon welcomed over $16 million of private-sector grants and appealed for greater use of the resources and expertise of business to reach international goals in education.
Investing in the health, education and empowerment of adolescents was a powerful way to create a stronger future, experts from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners said at Headquarters today. “Adolescence is a pivot point,” said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde Frafjord Johnson at a press conference to launch the agency’s flagship annual report, The State of the World’s Children, subtitled “Adolescence: an Age of Opportunity”.
Mexico’s signature of the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity was not only a demonstration of its commitment to biodiversity protection, but also of the importance of signing for the country itself and the world, Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira said at a Headquarters press conference today.
With steadily increasing food prices beginning to squeeze the world’s poorest people — who were already spending nearly all their income on basic staples — the top United Nations food security official today appealed to the international community and multilateral agencies to be ready to respond to market volatility and supply shocks affecting the nutrition, lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable communities.
The dangerously high volatility of global food prices would be a major target of the French presidency of the Group of 20 (G-20), which would actively promote concrete solutions during 2011, France’s Agriculture Minister pledged at a Headquarters press conference today.
A quiet revolution in the use of social protections had occurred in countries across the global South over the last 10 to 15 years, Michael Cichon, Director of the ILO Social Security Department, said today at the launch of the report “Successful social protection floor experiences” on the occasion of the World Day of Social Justice.
The top United Nations humanitarian official today drew attention to ongoing crises in two Eastern African countries — Kenya and neighbouring strife-torn Somalia — where failed rains and worsening droughts were putting pressure on millions of beleaguered people across a region in no position to bear added anguish.