Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, delivered by John Sandage, Officer-in-Charge, Division for Treaty Affairs, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in Salvador, Brazil, 12 April:

As mortality declined in most countries during the twentieth century, life expectancy has risen in all world regions, the United Nations reports, ahead of an intergovernmental meeting on population and development next week in New York. From 47 years in 1950-1955, global life expectancy increased sharply to 68 years in 2005-2010.

While life expectancy had risen in all regions over the past 50 years -- one major achievement of the last century -- health improvements and medical advances were not reaching huge swaths of the developing world, mandating the global community to work harder to ensure that people did not die of preventable disease, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it opened its forty-third session under the theme of “Health, morbidity, mortality and development”.

The Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice opened this morning in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, with a fervent call by United Nations and Government officials for stronger global cooperation among all stakeholders, as well as stronger legal tools to stamp out organized crime.

The Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea, today, 12 April 2010 listed the following individuals and entity pursuant to paragraph 8 of resolution 1844 (2008):

The sustainability of the peace process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo would depend on the success of the efforts to stimulate recovery and reconstruction and to ensure the effective presence and authority of the State, as well as consolidation of democratic structures, the Head of the United Nations Mission in that country told the Security Council today.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks as delivered at the Nuclear Security Summit on “International Actions to Secure Nuclear Materials and Prevent Illicit Trafficking”, in Washington, D.C., 13 April:

The new United Nations Appeals Tribunal completed its first session ever 1 April. Sitting for three weeks in Geneva, the court decided 33 appeals. After translation, the judgments will be released and posted on the website maintained by the Office of Administration of Justice in the month of April.

People around the world were dying because their needs went unmet by health systems that were fragmented, broken and struggling, the Commission on Population and Development heard today as it continued its general debate on national experiences related to health, morbidity, mortality and development.

While advances in information technology held many benefits for society, its dark underside ‑‑ computer-based fraud and forgery, illegal interception of private communications, interference with data and misuse of electronic devices ‑‑ required States to develop an organized, international response, delegates said today at the Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.