Press Conference

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.

Inspired by the International Year of Reconciliation, 2009, a Madrid-based non-governmental organization announced today that its international school award competition for 2011 would aim to teach children around the world about the importance of peace and reconciliation in resolving conflicts. “We wanted to do something special about peace,” Joaquín Antuña, President of Peace and Cooperation, said at a Headquarters press conference.

Nearly half of the 145 journalists placed behind bars in 2010 found themselves in Chinese and Iranian prisons, making those two countries among the most dangerous for journalists working around the world, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists said today at a United Nations Headquarters press conference.

The border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, which erupted in exchanges of fire earlier this month, must be resolved through bilateral negotiations, Thailand’s Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said at a Headquarters news conference today.

Stressing that social security was a human right, a senior ILO official today spotlighted the issue of social protection and its importance in poverty eradication at a Headquarters press conference on a United Nations-backed programme aimed at promoting investment in and access to essential services and social transfers for poor and vulnerable communities.