Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference on the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in New York, 6 June:
While broad progress had been made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, the statistics hid “massive” disparities within countries and regions, which underlined the urgent need to remove the barriers impeding key interventions, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today at a Headquarters press conference.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the release of his vision statement on his “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative, and announced the members of the High-Level Group that would spearhead the initiative.
As the world population officially reached 7 billion today, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for global solidarity to address pressing problems of climate change, economic crisis and inequality in order to make the world a better place for current and future generations. He pledged to work towards those aims this week during the Group of Twenty (G-20) Summit in Cannes.
There was firm evidence that both pro-Government elements and opposition forces in Libya were responsible for the recruitment of child soldiers, a war crime, Special Representative Radhika Coomaraswamy said at Headquarters today as she released the Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict.