Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks to the Extraordinary Summit of the African Union on Peace and Security Issues in Africa in Addis Ababa, 25 May:

The Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, also known as the Special Committee of 24, will hold its annual regional seminar in Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, from 31 May to 2 June.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the launch of the Global Partnership for Girls’ and Women’s Education and the High-Level Panel on Girls’ and Women’s Education for Empowerment and Gender Equality, in Paris on 26 May:

A draft resolution concerning the financing of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was introduced today in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) by the representative of Argentina, on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China.

In a resumed organizational session today, the Economic and Social Council filled vacancies in three of its subsidiary bodies, electing members by secret ballot and by acclamation. Voting by secret ballot, the Council elected Iran to a four-year term on the Commission on Population and Development, beginning today and expiring at the close of that body’s forty-eighth session in 2015.

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

While well versed in overseeing the implementation of peace accords, the United Nations system had much less experience in supporting indigenous peoples and communities in conflict resolution, and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues should consider what kind of role it could play in addressing those gaps, that body was told today as it took up the report of its Special Rapporteur on the status of implementation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord of 1997.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, meeting today to discuss the provisional agenda for its next session, solidified its plans to hold discussions in 2012 on food security, human rights and the session’s proposed special theme, the “Doctrine of Discovery” — which some members stressed would be a “forward thinking” dialogue.

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro’s remarks at the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal awards ceremony today, for the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers in New York, to be observed on 29 May:

The following statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was issued today: