Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro’s remarks at the closure of the International Year for People of African Descent in New York on 6 December:

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

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

The General Assembly would stress the importance of continuing to consider the issue of development cooperation with middle-income countries, according to one of six draft resolutions that the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) approved by consensus today.

Strongly condemning acts of violence against diplomatic and consular missions and officials, the General Assembly today adopted, by recorded vote, a resolution deploring an alleged plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, and called on Iran to cooperate in bringing those responsible for the plot to justice.

The Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today approved a draft resolution that would have the General Assembly adopt a new, third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child establishing a communications procedure, which would allow the Committee overseeing the Convention’s implementation to receive and examine individual complaints from children and to organize country visits to investigate cases of grave and systematic violations of children’s rights.

In the face of the increasingly devastating scourge of climate change and a global financial crisis that demanded the smarter use of natural resources, delegates in the General Assembly stressed today that urgent action was needed in efforts to sustainably manage the world oceans and marine ecosystems.

Following is UN Secretary-General’s message to the Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability, in Durban, South Africa, 6 December:

Following are UN Secretary-General’s remarks on mobilizing long-term climate financing for developing countries, in Durban, South Africa, 7 December:

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message, aired on 7 December, for the sixtieth anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the fiftieth anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, held in Geneva, 6-7 December: