The Secretary-General, in a report on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1559 (2004), says that the formal parliamentary endorsement of the Government of National Unity in Lebanon last December, six months after the parliamentary elections, is an important achievement. However, he adds, the presence of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias continues to pose a threat to the stability of the country and the region.

A new study by the World Bank had confirmed that indigenous people, making up 5 per cent of the world’s population, were still among the poorest of the poor, although findings indicated that indigenous peoples in Asia were closing the gap faster than indigenous peoples in other parts of the world.

The Secretary-General has received the final report of the Board of Inquiry into the 28 October 2009 terrorist attack on the Bakhtar guest house in Kabul. It highlights a number of shortcomings in the United Nations security measures as well as with respect to coordination between the United Nations and both its international partners and the host Government authorities.

Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the Secretary-General will hold a press conference to present the report of his Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change. It calls for a transition to a new energy pathway that will provide universal access to modern energy sources while addressing the challenges of climate change, sustainable development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Indigenous students taken years ago from their families and forced into residential schools by the Canadian Government as a way to assimilate into mainstream culture were now ‑‑ decadeslater ‑‑ receiving compensation for their trauma as part of a broad desire to leave a discriminatory past behind and build a stronger future, Murray Sinclair, Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, said today at a Headquarters press briefing.

Very good progress had been made so far in the United Nations-mediated negotiations on the long-running Cyprus dispute, including a broad measure of agreement on the three “chapters” of governance and power-sharing, the economy, and European Union matters, Alexander Downer, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Cyprus, said at a Headquarters press conference today.

The Secretary-General has appointed Tayé-Brook Zerihoun of Ethiopia as Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs. He replaces Haile Menkerios of South Africa, who has been appointed, for a one-year period, as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan.

A global effort to scale up investment in clean, efficient energy and bring affordable energy services to the 1.6 billion people worldwide currently lacking them would go a long way towards stopping climate change and achieving the Millennium Development Goals, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Briefing correspondents today on the upcoming 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the President-elect of the Conference said that, while he was aware of the “landmines” that would make his task during the Conference much more challenging, he and his Government had invested much time, effort, energy and resources in order to contribute to the “global undertaking for a peaceful world”.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is teaming up with the non-profit group One Laptop per Child to distribute computers to nearly half a million Palestine refugee children at UNRWA-run schools by 2012. Today, officials, as well as teachers and children, are celebrating the deployment of the first 2,100 laptops at the Rafah Co-Education Elementary School D.