While commending Member States for making headway on the major themes on the agenda of the General Assembly’s sixty-fifth session dealing with poverty reduction, global governance, a green economy and sustainable development, Joseph Deiss, the world body’s outgoing President today warned “our commitment in the name of the values of the United Nations has sometimes been too weak or too late”.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the closing of the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly, in New York, today, 12 September:

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will hold a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities resulting from the milestone to be reached on 31 October, when the world is expected to welcome its seven-billionth person.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, 16 September:

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message, delivered by Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, to the United Nations Inter-Agency Meeting on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, held in Paris 13-14 September:

Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro today urged delegates from Governments and civil society to build on the early success of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by promoting the issue beyond the walls of the United Nations and telling the world that disabled people could make enormous contributions to progress.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

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

Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser was elected President of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly on 22 June 2011. A veteran diplomat, Mr. Al-Nasser has contributed to advancing the multilateral agenda in the realms of peace and security, sustainable development and South-South cooperation over a career spanning nearly four decades.

“We come together at a critical juncture,” said the incoming General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, as he opened the 193‑member body’s sixty-sixth session with a call to action on the United Nations to rethink the way it did business in the wake of ongoing global economic turmoil, popular protests that were upending once-stable Governments and the seemingly unending raft of natural hazards and man-made disasters.