The world had become “marginally less peaceful”, in the last 12 months, Clyde McConaghy, a Board Member of the Institute for Economics and Peace, said today at a Headquarters press conference on the results of the Global Peace Index for 2010. Highlighting key findings of the Index, he said internal country indicators, such as the likelihood of violent demonstrations, homicide rates and perceptions of criminality within society, were major drivers that created a less peaceful world.

A coalition of States working to end piracy and armed robbery off the Somali Coast held its sixth meeting today at United Nations Headquarters and briefed correspondents afterward on the operational challenges they were facing, among them the vast distances of ocean that needed protecting and the lack of legal capacity among most countries of the region.

With the scale and complexity of United Nations peacekeeping operations increasing dramatically over the past decade, new and innovative approaches to disarmament, demobilization and reintegration — driven more by practitioners in the field and their local partners than by diplomats in New York — were beginning to make a difference on the ground, a senior peacekeeping official said today.

The Secretary-General is in South Africa today, where he has been attending the FIFA World Cup opening ceremony and the opening match at the Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg. He regards this World Cup tournament as a major landmark for the people of Africa, and was thrilled to be able to experience the exuberance of the opening ceremony and match.

At a Headquarters press conference today, the General Assembly President elect for the sixty-fifth session, Joseph Deiss ( Switzerland), said that the priorities of his tenure would be global and environmental governance, human rights, the environment and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The International Criminal Court, unfit for its purpose and marred by double standards, was destroying peace processes in sub-Saharan Africa, David Hoile, an African scholar and public affairs consultant, said today at a Headquarters news conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of the Sudan to the United Nations.

Non-governmental organizations had been crucial partners in efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and while their voices were many and diverse, they carried a common message: the Goals must be understood in the context of the need for new development paths.

A global network of child rights monitors today called on the Security Council to prioritize child concerns during its planned visit to Afghanistan, where it said more than 1,000 children had been killed in 2009 as a result of aerial bombings, night raids, landmines and other explosives.

The Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact Office said today that, while corporate responsibility continues to be high on the business agenda despite the worldwide economic downturn, many companies had nevertheless failed to implement key policies on human rights and anti-corruption.

The Secretary-General spoke by telephone on Saturday with the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan, Kanat Saudabayev, who is the Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and they discussed the growing tensions in Kyrgyzstan. The Secretary-General said he was alarmed by the scale of the clashes, the inter-ethnic nature of the violence, the mounting casualties and the large number of displaced people.