On 15 June, the United Nations General Assembly elected Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark to serve as the President of its seventieth session, which runs from September 2015 to September 2016.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the opening of the seventieth session of the General Assembly, in New York today:

The historic seventieth session of the United Nations General Assembly must be one marked by concerted action against war, violent extremism, poverty, climate change and the many other crises besetting humanity, said the Assembly’s incoming President as he opened the session’s first meeting today.

With fresh violence erupting around the holy sites of the Old City of Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians should not let fear triumph, but should create conducive conditions for resuming peace negotiations, a senior United Nations official told the Security Council today.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at a wreath-laying ceremony commemorating the fifty-fourth anniversary of the death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, in New York, today:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Virginia Gamba of Argentina to head the independent three-member panel to be set up to lead the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism established by Security Council resolution 2235 (2015) on the use of chemicals as weapons in Syria.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the launch of the exhibition: “Water for Life” at the Nehru Science Centre, in Mumbai, India, today:

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the Church of the Holy Family, in New York today:

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the closing of the sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly, in New York today:

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the award ceremony for the UN Energy Grant, in New York today: