As part of its ongoing efforts to strengthen the accountability and transparency of United Nations activities, delegates to the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today expressed strong support for the work of the two crucial oversight bodies — the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), and the Independent Audit Advisory Committee — as it took up their wide-ranging annual reports.

Against a backdrop of the widely-held view that more than 20,000 nuclear weapons still existed in the world today, legally binding negative security assurances, or promises that nuclear-weapon States would never use those weapons against those countries that did not have them, and a verifiable and irreversible nuclear weapons convention were sure ways to motivate the “marathon towards global zero”, the Disarmament Committee heard today in the course of its debate.

Pressed to conclude their work over the next two years, top officials from the United Nations war crimes Tribunals investigating atrocities committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the Balkan wars of the 1990s, today appealed to the General Assembly for more time, resources and, especially, incentives to help attract and hold onto qualified staff.

As the Fourth Committee continued its general debate on decolonization issues today, delegations praised the progress that had been made towards self-determination in the Pacific region, while expressing frustration with the scant progress towards reducing the number overall of United Nations-listed Non-Self-Governing Territories, including Western Sahara.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at a screening of the film "Killing in the Name", in New York, 8 October:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the extraordinary session of the Summit Conference of the League of Arab States, delivered by Robert Serry, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, in Sirte, Libya, 9 October:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message marking the sixtieth anniversary of World Vision Korea, today, 11 October:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the International Cooperation Conference for the Reconstruction with Transformation of Guatemala, delivered by Alicia Bárcena, Executive Director, United Nations Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in Guatemala City, today, 11 October:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on the Caribbean launch of the UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, delivered by Gladys Acosta of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) (part of UN Women), in Barbados, today, 11 October: