“Women now are watching and waiting,” Margot Wallström, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told the Security Council today as it concluded its debate on that subject. Pledging not to rest until sexual violence in conflict situations had been eliminated, she said that, with the Council’s unanimous adoption of resolution 1960 (2010) yesterday, the tools to end it were available and now they must be used.

The Security Council today renewed for 12 months its arms embargo on Liberia and its travel ban on persons deemed threatening to the country’s peace process.

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference held in New York today, 17 December:

Recognizing that major changes had occurred in Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Security Council today returned control of mineral exports to that country’s Government, ended the oil-for-food programme and lifted restrictions on programmes for the development of nuclear energy.

The international community must apply innovative thinking to reduce tensions generated by critical election processes in West Africa, Said Djinnit, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the United Nations Office in the subregion told the Security Council today.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Susan Rice (United States):

The following statement was issued on 18 December by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the closing ceremony for the International Year of Biodiversity, delivered by Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in Kanazawa, Japan, 18 December:

The outgoing members of the Security Council — Austria, Japan, Mexico, Turkey and Uganda — delivered briefings this morning on the work of subsidiary bodies they had chaired during their two-year tenure.

Condemning in the strongest possible terms the attempts to usurp the will of the people and undermine the integrity of the electoral process, the Security Council this morning renewed the mandate of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) until 30 June 2011 and urged all parties to respect the will of the people and the election outcome in view of the recognition by ECOWAS and the African Union of Alassane Ouattara as the newly elected President of Côte d’Ivoire.