The Secretary-General has been taking part in events in Rome to mark the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. This morning, he attended a military parade, along with many foreign dignitaries, and later at an official dinner he is expected to offer a toast on behalf of the international community, highlighting Italy’s strong support for the United Nations and paying tribute to Italy’s contribution to art and culture.

HIV/AIDS and transnational organized crime would be among the major topics for discussion by the Security Council later this month, as the body also remained seized of situations including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Libya and others, according to the Permanent Representative of Gabon, which holds the Council presidency for June.

A United Nations-backed sustainable electricity partnership made a strong case today for the transformative role that small-scale, off-grid projects could play in bringing clean, reliable energy and electricity to billions of the world’s “energy poor” people living in remote communities and tied to burning coal or heavy oil.

The Secretary-General is alarmed at the escalation of violence in Syria, which has reportedly left at least 70 killed over the past week alone, bringing the total casualties since mid-March to over 1,000 dead, many more injured and thousands arrested.

With a new United Nations report showing exponential progress in the struggle against HIV/AIDS over the past 30 years, next week’s high-level meeting on the response to the epidemic would be an opportunity to end much of the harm it caused, Deputy-Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said at Headquarters today.

At a Headquarters press conference today, Xavier Bertrand, the Minister of Labour, Employment and Health of France, outlined his Government’s priorities during its presidency of the G-20, which would emphasize strengthening the social dimension of globalization to ensure that the worldwide movement towards integration was better aligned with popular concerns for employment, prosperity and social security.

Meeting in New York this week to craft a blueprint for the next decade’s global response to HIV/AIDS, Governments must recommit to bringing life-saving treatment to all in need, supporting an ambitious treatment target and injecting $6 billion annually into efforts to close the treatment gap, experts from Médecins Sans Frontières said at a Headquarters press conference today.

At the Security Council’s meeting today on the impact of HIV/AIDS on peace and security, the Secretary-General said that whenever AIDS is part of the equation, the UN strives to be part of the solution. He urged all to address the dangerous link between AIDS, the drug trade, sex trafficking and abuse of women.

World leaders attending this week’s General Assembly High-level Meeting on HIV/AIDS must make bold commitments to reach the shared goal of zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths, as the lives of all those living with or affected by the disease weighed in the balance, Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) said at a Headquarters press conference today.

With the corporate world increasingly aligning itself with the goals of the United Nations, the Organization enjoyed growing private-sector support as well as more partnership activities on the ground to address key initiatives relating to health, poverty reduction and the environment, Georg Kell, Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, said today at Headquarters.