NEW YORK, 7 June (United Nations Global Compact Office) — When it comes to broad implementation of responsible business practices, company size matters most. And while businesses around the world seem to be making tangible progress in addressing environmental concerns, many continue to struggle in the human rights and anti-corruption arena.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the forty-first General Assembly of the Organization of American States, as delivered by Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in San Salvador, 7 June:

Genocide and crimes against humanity continued unabated in Darfur because the President of Sudan had learned to defy the Security Council’s authority, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court told Council members today. Luis Moreno-Ocampo said during his briefing on Sudan that the crimes in question included air attacks on civilians as well as the direct killing of members of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

Ten years after the world community had come together to forge the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, participants in the first of five panels scheduled during this week’s three-day United Nations high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS called for a new paradigm in AIDS response that focused not only on the disease, but championed broader social development, supported the establishment of robust national health systems and, most importantly, responded to those without a voice.

The United Nations Department of Public Information will organize the third annual Global Model UN Conference in Incheon, Republic of Korea, from 10 to 14 August under the theme “Sustainable Development: Advancing Human Progress in Harmony with Nature”. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will deliver the opening address.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks to the General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS side event with Heads of State and Government on AIDS, health and development, in New York on 8 June:

The tragic 30-year arc of the AIDS virus, which had left in its wake some 30 million people dead, nearly as many struggling to live with the disease and vast numbers of orphans, had likewise left the international community scrambling to answer a host of complex questions, such as how to accelerate targeted prevention interventions, and perhaps most critically, what can be done stop new infections.

After three decades, the global fight against AIDS was at a moment of truth and Governments, civil society and the private sector must come together to ensure that past commitments to achieve universal access to life-saving treatments were met and that the elusive pandemic was stopped in its tracks in the coming decade, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared today as he opened the General Assembly High-level Meeting on AIDS, which aimed to shape the future global response.

The holding of peaceful, credible elections, protection of civilians, regional stabilization, control of mineral resources and security-sector reform presented the major challenges in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the coming year, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative told the Security Council this morning.