Delegates discussed strategies to better manage the United Nations budget for both active and closed peacekeeping missions, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) opened the second part of its resumed sixty-eighth session this morning and adopted its programme of work.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, jointly with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Government of the Republic of Turkey, will convene the International Meeting on the Question of Jerusalem on 12 and 13 May 2014 at the Sheraton Hotel and Convention Centre in Ankara.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message for the launch of the Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, on 6 May 2014:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the eleventh Asia Media Summit, taking place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from 6 to 8 May:

A decade after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1540 (2004),Governments around the world are working hard to implement its requirements, with Member States having enacted a large number of relevant laws and deployed a wide range of appropriate measures.

The United Nations financial situation was “generally sound” at the end of 2013 thanks to the continued positive efforts of many Member States, the Organization’s top management official today told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary).

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message, as delivered by Ahmad Alhendawi, Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, to the World Conference on Youth 2014, in Colombo today:

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for the Secretary General:

On 7 May 2014, the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea adopted its first implementation assistance notice entitled “Recommendations on interdiction of charcoal from Somalia by Member States pursuant to Security Council resolutions 2036 (2012), 2060 (2012) and 2111 (2013)”.

Delegates expressed alarm today that proposed cuts to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti would thwart that struggling Caribbean nation’s gains towards stability and development, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Financial) examined the budgets for the previous and current cycles of that mission and three other peacekeeping operations.