Meetings Coverage and Press Releases

In progress at UNHQ

Meetings Coverage

ENV/DEV/1209

Twenty Years after Rio Summit, World’s Ecosystems Still Threatened by Unsustainable Consumption, Production, Commission Told as High-Level Segment Opens

Twenty years after participants to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro first recognized that unsustainable consumption and production patterns formed the biggest threat to the Earth’s capacity to satisfy human needs, that challenge continued to loom large and finding a framework to control it must be seen as a strategic priority, the Commission on Sustainable Development was told today, as it opened its three-day high-level segment.
DEV/2891

Indivisible Relationship between Good Governance, Durable Economic Growth in Least Developed Countries Subject of Thematic Debate in Istanbul

ISTANBUL, 11 May — The inexorable collapse of autocratic regimes in Africa, the stirring cries for free expression in the Middle East, and the demand for transparent political processes worldwide were vivid examples of why good governance practices should be encouraged –- and reinforced -- in all societies, experts said this morning during a high-level panel at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries.

DEV/2887

High-Level Thematic Debate Considers Resource Mobilization to Break Logjam in Development, as Least Developed Countries Conference Continues

ISTANBUL, 10 May — Prodigious existing domestic and international flows of funds, as well as innovative financing methods, must be harnessed to fill the huge gap in infrastructure and human resources suffered by the poorest countries, a high-level panel said this morning at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Istanbul.

GA/AB/3988

Budget Committee Takes Up Third Report on Restructuring of Peacekeeping Operations; Financing Proposals for Support Account for Peacekeeping, Brindisi Logistics Base

The Fifth Committee today heard the United Nations top officials responsible for peacekeeping and the mission support needed to sustain it review the successes and difficulties of the restructuring of operations begun in 2007, and lay out the approach they developed to ensure the support account for the operations strengthened the capacity to manage them in a changing world of greater financial constraints.
DEV/2886

Delegations Seek to Realign Development Strategies for World’s Poor, as Conference on Least Developed Countries Continues in Istanbul

ISTANBUL, 10 May — Structurally transforming the world’s poorest countries over the next decade required investing in national productive sectors, building infrastructure to boost trade and, for many small islands, adopting measures to cushion against external shocks that often wiped out hard-won gains, senior Government officials said today as the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries moved into its second day.

DEV/2880

As Istanbul Conference Opens, Secretary-General Urges Recognition of Least Developed Countries as ‘Vast Reservoirs of Untapped Potential’

ISTANBUL, 9 May — As the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries opened this morning, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, other senior international officials and Heads of State and Government called for a new vision to reverse the profound poverty of the people living in the world’s 48 poorest countries and lay a firm foundation for their integration into the world economy.

SC/10244

United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Head Briefs Security Council on Libya, Presses for Pause in Hostilities to Allow Evacuations, Aid Deliveries

The United Nations top humanitarian official this afternoon pressed for a temporary end to hostilities in Misrata and other areas in Libya in order to allow civilians in the strife-torn North African nation to leave and international relief workers to deliver vital humanitarian aid and assess the humanitarian situation on the ground. “Civilians are still coming under fire in these conflict areas. This has to stop,” said Valerie Amos, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.