Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the sixty-third DPI/NGO Conference: “Advance Global Health: Achieve the MDGs”, in Melbourne, 30 August:

With thousands of people forced into labour, servitude or the sex trade each year, the General Assembly formally launched the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons today, one month after its adoption as a consensus resolution outlining the terms of the Plan.

Amid broad agreement that profound disparities in health and life expectancy between the citizens of developed and developing nations were wide and entrenched, a distinguished panel today debated the equity of the Millennium Development Goals for the poorest and most marginalized in society, as the sixty-third annual DPI/NGO Conference entered its second day.

With the advantages of pooling efforts to create a unified and effective governance system for global health gaining traction, the DPI/NGO Conference today examined this concept in the context of strengthening an integrated and systems approach to achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals.

This statement was issued today by the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on the resumption of permanent status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians:

On 13 August 2010, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo updated the List of individuals and entities subject to the travel ban and assets freeze imposed by paragraphs 13 and 15 of resolution 1596 (2005) as renewed by paragraph 3 of resolution 1896 (2009).

The General Assembly this morning elected Joseph Deiss, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Switzerland who led his country’s accession to the United Nations in 2002, as President of its sixty-fifth session.

The following press statement on Somalia was issued today by Council President Vitaly Churkin (Russian Federation):

The fourth and final round table of the sixty-third annual DPI/NGO Conference wrapped up today with a show of overwhelming support for what the Chair of the Conference has called “the people’s document”.

“This is not the time to question the validity of the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] themselves, but rather a time to roll up our sleeves and do what is necessary to attain them, and beyond that, to look at the question of ensuring that they are sustainable after 2015,” said Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, today at the conclusion of the sixty-third annual DPI/NGO Conference in Melbourne, Australia.