Highlighting progress in gender equality, life expectancy and access to reproductive and health services since the landmark 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, speakers renewed calls for greater efforts to uphold the rights of all to health, education and jobs, as the Commission on Population and Development opened its annual session today.

The Department of Global Communications engages global audiences not just on the state of a world troubled by spreading pollution, inequality, hate and violence, but also on “the solutions that are out there”, its top official told the Committee on Information during the opening of its forty-sixth session today, as delegates highlighted the need to combat disinformation through facts communicated by the United Nations across and beyond its six official languages.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Vanessa Frazier (Malta):

The Head of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) met Thursday at the UNIFIL base in Ibl el-Saqi with the mayors and religious authorities of south-eastern towns to discuss local needs and the UN’s humanitarian support to impacted communities, including to restore stability along the Blue Line.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues met today to approve the programme for its twenty-fourth session and close its twenty-third session.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the launch of the Secretary-General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, in New York today:

With ever-growing needs for minerals that are critical for renewable energy technologies, Secretary-General António Guterres is leveraging the United Nations’ convening power to bring together a diverse group of Governments and other stakeholders across the entire minerals value chain to develop a set of global common and voluntary principles to safeguard environmental and social standards and embed justice, in the energy transition.

The Security Council met this afternoon to conclude its debate on the theme “Preventing conflict-related sexual violence through demilitarization and gender-responsive arms control”. 

The Security Council met this morning to conclude its ministerial debate on the theme “the role of young people in addressing security challenges in the Mediterranean”.

The new Permanent Representative of Türkiye to the United Nations, Ahmet Yıldız, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.