Despite many successes over the past year in protecting children in situations of armed conflict, many challenges remained, senior United Nations officials in that field said at a Headquarters press conference today. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict said one of those challenges was gaining access to non-State actors with whom her Office could negotiate action plans for the release of children recruited as combatants by armed groups.

With the United Nations poised to host a summit on the Millennium Development Goals in September, Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, today urged world leaders to consider an “acceleration framework” based on real-life national successes, in order to bring the Goals to fruition by 2015.

The Secretary-General addressed the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on Transnational Organized Crime earlier this morning. He said that the international community’s ability to deliver justice in such cases is not evolving as quickly as the criminals’ skill at evading justice.

Highlighting a number of events taking place this month that will feed into September’s summit on the Millennium Development Goals, top United Nations officials this afternoon stressed the importance of political will for reaching the anti-poverty targets by their 2015 deadline.

The Middle East Quartet today issued a statement on Israel’s actions on Gaza, reaffirming that the current situation in Gaza, including the humanitarian and human rights situation of the civilian population, is unsustainable, unacceptable, and not in the interests of any of those concerned.

The Security Council held an open meeting this morning to hear briefings by Prosecutors Serge Brammertz of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Hassan Jallow of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Existing modern energy services failed to meet the needs of half the world’s population — some 3 billion people — hampering the ability of poor countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, but an innovative micro-hydropower project that supplied electricity to remote, rural communities in Nepal held lessons that could be applied and scaled up elsewhere, Olav Kjørven, Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said at Headquarters today.

The Secretary-General has appointed a Panel of Experts that will advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka.

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.