With attacks on humanitarian workers increasing, aid organizations must return to core neutrality principles and negotiate safe access with all parties rather than abandoning the victims of conflict, according to a United Nations report launched this afternoon at Headquarters. “There are no places on earth where humanitarian organizations should not go or can not go,” Jan Egeland, former Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said as he introduced the study that he had co-authored.

In Doha, the Secretary-General today told the first meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya that the international community had acted swiftly and decisively in the past seven weeks. But, even the most optimistic observers foresee a protracted period of instability before sustainable peace can be restored. In the meantime, the humanitarian situation continues to worsen.

Updating the press on the latest developments regarding the work of the sixty-fifth General Assembly, Joseph Deiss, the 192-member body’s President, today highlighted a host of upcoming topical debates and took questions on the push for Palestinian statehood, as well as on the status of the negotiations to reform and expand the Security Council.

Forest loss was accelerating across forest basins in the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong regions, areas that together comprised 80 per cent of the world’s tropical forests, were home to two thirds of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and provided livelihoods to more than 1 billion people, Henri Djombo, Minister of Sustainable Development, Forests and Environment of the Congo, said today, announcing that his country would soon host a high-level summit to generate solutions.

The Secretary-General today co-chaired a conference of international and regional organizations in Cairo, to discuss coordination on Libya. Concerned about the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, he said that the United Nations has completed an inter-agency needs assessment in the east of Libya, with similar work planned for the west.

Despite very difficult circumstances, including the loss of many personnel, United Nations peacekeeping had passed critical tests in tackling “make-or-break” situations in Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti and Sudan, Secretariat officials said at Headquarters today. “Of course we’re not perfect, but peacekeepers made quite a difference,” Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said at the regular quarterly media briefing.

An innovative global campaign aimed at preventing domestic violence and abuse was launched today at a Headquarters press conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations.

In the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, the international scientific community had made considerable advances in understanding and mitigating earthquake risks and a major push was under way to integrate those technologies into Haiti’s reconstruction plans at all levels, said a senior scientist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at a Headquarters press conference today.

The Secretary-General, speaking to reporters in Hungary today, said that his Special Envoy for Libya, Abdul Ilah al-Khatib, visited Tripoli yesterday, together with the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos. He said that he was encouraged to report that, as a result, the United Nations reached an agreement yesterday on a humanitarian presence in Tripoli.

The Secretary-General addressed a summit on nuclear safety in Kyiv today and said that we need a global rethink on this fundamental question. Because the consequences are catastrophic, safety must be paramount. He said that it is time for a top-to-bottom review of current nuclear safety standards, both at the national and international levels.