In Côte d’Ivoire, OCHA says that thousands of people face enormous humanitarian needs. Their vulnerability is aggravated by a lingering lack of security in certain places, as well as by the difficulty in obtaining access to essential health, education and sanitation services. The United Nations has deployed an evaluation and coordination team to Abidjan and the western part of the country since 19 April, to identify the needs of the most vulnerable people.

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe provided the Security Council with an update on Syria in an open meeting yesterday afternoon, saying that the anti-Government demonstrations that had started in mid-March have gradually, but steadily, increased in geographic scope and participation and the Syrian authorities have reacted with a mix of reform measures and increasingly violent repression.

The Secretary-General was appalled by the bombing in Marrakech, which killed and injured Moroccans and foreign nationals. He reiterated his firm rejection of the use of indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians. In their own statement to the press, the members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Marrakech.

The Secretary-General this morning said that the death of Osama bin Laden is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism. He noted that the General Assembly has adopted a global counter-terrorism strategy and that we will continue to work together with Member States to completely eradicate global terrorism.

Marking World Press Freedom Day, the Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Director-General of UNESCO stressed that State authorities must do everything to counter impunity and to protect the safety of journalists. More than 500 journalists have lost their lives, with 60 killings reported worldwide in 2010 alone.

At current fertility levels, the world’s population of nearly 7 billion was projected to reach 10.1 billion in the next 90 years, with most of that increase generated by high-fertility countries, Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said at Headquarters today.

The Security Council would take advantage of a slightly lighter workload during May to take a week-long mission to the African continent, Gérard Araud, Permanent Representative of France, and Council President for the month, told reporters today at Headquarters.

Children in the Central African Republic were being abducted, recruited into armed groups and denied humanitarian assistance, according to a new report by Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, entitled An Uncertain Future? Children and Armed Conflict in the Central African Republic.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, told the Security Council this morning that the evidence shows that security forces in Libya have been shooting at peaceful demonstrators and, in the coming weeks, he will request that arrest warrants be issued against the three individuals who bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity committed there.

The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said today that he would seek arrest warrants in the next few weeks for three people as part of his investigation into crimes against humanity committed in Libya since 15 February. He did not disclose their names, but said that the three individuals were deemed “most responsible” for ongoing attacks against civilians, including murder and persecution, since political unrest began in the North African country two month ago.