Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an intensified focus on priorities, political will and partnership to achieve the Millennium Development Goals this morning, as he launched a report that showed a mix of progress and obstacles in reaching the anti-poverty targets. “This report shows that economic uncertainty cannot be an excuse to slow down our development efforts. It is a reason to speed them up,” he said, introducing the major findings of the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010.

The two-day United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit 2010 would combine a distinguished group of public servants familiar with how to “speak business” and a distinguished group of business leaders accustomed to speaking up for the public good, Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning, said at Headquarters today.

As the world continued to reel from the financial crisis, and climate change, poverty and resource constraints tested capabilities, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged more than 1,200 top business executives gathered in New York City for the 2010 Global Compact Leaders Summit to usher in a new era of sustainability in which corporations played a central role.

The Secretary-General today addressed the third Global Compact Leaders Summit, telling business leaders and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the Global Compact has become the world's largest and most ambitious initiative of its kind during its first 10 years. Corporate sustainability is becoming a by-word in companies worldwide. He said the Compact may be voluntary, but that doesn’t mean it lacks teeth.

On many fronts — its peace and security, development and humanitarian agendas included — the United Nations was partnering with the private sector in new and diverse ways to more efficiently tackle some of the world’s most entrenched problems, said Robert Orr, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning.

The Secretary-General was at an event to commemorate the beginning of the Korean War. That took place down at Battery Park, in Manhattan.

Emphasizing that gender equality and women’s empowerment lay at the heart of achieving all the other Millennium Development Goals, Hamidon Ali (Malaysia), President of the Economic and Social Council, said today that the Council’s upcoming session would aim to capitalize on those links to improve the socio-economic lot of women everywhere.

The Secretary-General condemns the vandalism last night by masked armed men of an UNRWA summer games facility in the Gaza Strip. He is very concerned that this is the second such incident in a month.

Replacing the abundance of sexy, racy images of women and girls in children’s television shows and films with diverse, true-to-life female characters would contribute towards efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on women’s empowerment and gender equality, Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, said Monday during a Headquarters press conference.

The Secretary-General has left New York and is on his way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he will be attending the events tomorrow to commemorate the country’s fiftieth anniversary since independence. This evening, he is to attend a gala dinner hosted by President Joseph Kabila.