Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at a town hall with Danish university students, in Copenhagen on 23 October:

As delegations decried the impasse in the Conference on Disarmament, Pakistan’s representative said today that its “lacklustre performance” did not derive from the “myth” of organizational or procedural issues, but was instead a reflection of the external political environment, which underpinned the deadlock in nuclear disarmament — the Conference’s raison d’être — for more than 30 years.

Middle-income countries were vulnerable to being caught in a “middle-income trap”, whereby they risked losing their competitiveness to low-income countries while still lacking the technological edge to catch up to high-income ones, the representative of the Bahamas said as the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) took up globalization and interdependence.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

Marking its twentieth year of operation, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had become increasingly action-oriented in response to a steadily growing number of requests from Member States for engagement and assistance, the High Commissioner told the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today.

Generally broad agreement emerged today in the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) as it concluded its debate on the peaceful uses of outer space that space systems contributed significantly to the functioning of modern societies, but that there was a risk of a “sudden, possibly, irreversible deteriorating of the orbital environment” owing to a number of factors, not least, space debris, as well as the use of that domain for military purposes.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Agshin Mehdiyev (Azerbaijan):

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the Future Policy Award Ceremony, as delivered by Angela Kane, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, in New York on 23 October:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the United Nations Association of New York 2013 Humanitarian Awards Dinner, delivered by Franz Baumann, Assistant Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management, in New York on 23 October:

The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (Treaty of Tlatelolco) was today proclaimed winner of the 2013 Future Policy Award for sustainable disarmament, beating 24 other nominated policies to the prize. The award will be presented at a ceremony this evening at United Nations Headquarters by the World Future Council, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.