The needs and rights of disabled persons must be more fully integrated into the United Nations system’s diverse international agenda, from its efforts to coordinate humanitarian assistance, provide development funds and fight disease, to its ability to empower women and collect data on human development, the Third Conference of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was told today, as it concluded its three-day session.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speech to the European Forum on The International Financial Crisis and the Millennium Development Goals, in Alpbach, 4 September:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the Africa Consultative Forum on the Millennium Development Goals, delivered by Jeffrey Sachs, Senior Adviser on the Millennium Development Goals, in Kigali, 4 September:

By a vote of 50 in favour to 17 against, with 86 abstentions, the General Assembly today adopted a resolution recognizing the right of return of all internally displaced persons and refugees and their descendants, regardless of ethnicity, to their homes throughout Georgia, including in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on the International Day of Democracy, observed 15 September:

While the primary responsibility for the protection of civilians and for preventing the mass rapes that occurred in August in the Democratic Republic of the Congo lay with the State, failures could be traced to the peacekeeping mission there as well, the head of an investigative mission on the incidents told the Security Council in a briefing this afternoon.

Representatives of Governments, international organizations, the Internet community, the private sector, civil society, and the media will convene from 14 to 17 September 2010 in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the fifth meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). More than 1,200 people from 115 countries have already registered for attending the meeting. Many more will be actively taking part in the Forum’s discussions and workshops via remote participation.

The hard decisions needed to take Nepal’s peace process forward lay firmly in the hands of the Himalayan country’s leaders, and were beyond the mandate and capacity of the United Nations Mission there, known as UNMIN, the Secretary-General’s representative told the Security Council this morning.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message for the World Investment Forum in Xiamen, China, 7 September (recorded on 27 August):

Reiterating strong and unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, “by whomever […] and for whatever purposes” they were committed, the General Assembly today reaffirmed its support for the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and called on the world body’s Member States and entities, along with other international and regional organizations, to step up implementation of the four-year-old initiative.