Expressing serious concern at the recent spate of attacks on peacekeepers and humanitarian personnel in Darfur, the top African Union-United Nations official there urged the Government of Sudan to do more to bring the perpetrators to justice and end restrictions on the delivery of relief assistance.

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

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki‑moon will designate the world-renowned pianist Lang Lang from China as a United Nations Messenger of Peace with a special focus on global education. The designation ceremony will take place at United Nations Headquarters on Monday, 28 October, at a press conference to be held in the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium at noon. Lang Lang will perform Chopin’s Waltz No. 1 for the occasion.

Speakers today in the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) said any breach of the chemical and biological weapons ban was repugnant and the recent use of chemical weapons a graphic reminder of the very real threat and scale of the potential consequences of those weapons, insisting that no effort should be spared to completely eliminate them for the sake of all humankind.

Three weeks after the Security Council expressed alarm at the significant and rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Syria, urging all appropriate steps be taken to protect civilians, the international response on the ground remained “severely insufficient”, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message to the Warsaw Dialogue for Democracy, to be held between 25 and 26 October:

The outer space environment was becoming increasingly “congested, contested and competitive” as States vied to benefit from space-based technologies, while cautioning that it must not become the next theatre of proliferation, the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) heard today as it took up its cluster on the disarmament aspects of outer space.

Human exposure to radiation, after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which damaged the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, was low or generally low, with no immediate health effects, the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) heard today in a briefing by the Chair of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

The lethal use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, came under scrutiny in the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today, as a United Nations human rights expert argued that the internationally recognized rule against arbitrary killing also applied to extraterritorial attacks by such weapons systems.

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