Ministers of small island developing States addressed their nations’ most pressing vulnerabilities today, at a headquarters press conference held to coincide with the General Assembly high-level review of the Mauritius Strategy agreed upon five years ago to help chart a path to sustainable development.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
At a Headquarters press conference today, Amre Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League stressed that a viable and serious process of negotiations for a peace settlement could not continue if Israeli settlement building in the Occupied Territories did not cease.
President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus declared today that he was “absolutely ready” for a fair and viable solution to the “Cyprus problem” as soon as possible.
The Millennium Development Goals on health would be reached by 2015 if the international community sustained and expanded its level of dedicated resources and effort, said the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at a Headquarters press conference today.
The newly appointed Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, told correspondents today that Governments are converging on the need to mandate a full set of ways and means to “launch a new wave of global climate action” ahead of a major conference to be held in Cancun, Mexico, in November.
The conservation and sustainable use of biological resources was not only crucial in ensuring that local and indigenous communities continued to reap their benefits, but also in creating opportunities for sustainable development and poverty eradication, Izabella Teixeira, Minister for Environment of Brazil, said at a Headquarters press conference today.
The political commitment to achieve better conditions for women must be backed by a financial commitment from United Nations Member States, including generating the minimum start-up budget of $500 million to get the world body’s new unified gender entity — “UN Women” — up and running by January 2011, the agency’s newly appointed chief said today.
The actor Edward Norton, United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity, joined two leading authorities in the field of biodiversity at a Headquarters press conference today to warn of the dangers faced by the planet if States failed to confront the loss of biodiversity, less than a month before an international conference on the issue in Nagoya, Japan.
At a Headquarters press conference today convened by the Global Compact Office, a panel representing Governments, the United Nations system and the private sector discussed the role of Governments and business in catalysing actions in support of the Millennium Development Goals.
Venezuela had met its development goals and was at the forefront of erasing inequality and extreme poverty, thanks to promotion of an alternative development model, Jorge Valero Briceño, Venezuela’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said this afternoon during a Headquarters news conference. “Under the leadership of President Hugo Chávez Frías, Venezuela has met most of the Millennium Development Goals,” he said.