Answering the international community’s call to strengthen and build the rule of law in countries in transition or emerging from conflict, senior United Nations officials today at Headquarters launched a special instrument created to monitor changes in the performance and fundamental characteristics of criminal justice institutions, especially in conflict and post-conflict environments.

Jamaica’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations announced at Headquarters today the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to launch a worldwide design competition for the permanent memorial that would be placed at the United Nations to honour the memory of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

The Secretary-General held his third meeting with the Cypriot leaders today in Geneva, which he said was productive. Some of the difficulties hampering a comprehensive agreement were identified and the leaders agreed to enter into an intensive period of negotiations on core issues when they return to the island.

After eight years of occupation by Coalition forces, said experts today from the United Nations Working Group that monitors mercenaries and mercenary-related activities, the security sector in Iraq faced a vacuum that opened the door to private military and security companies.

The Secretary-General arrived in Juba, where he will attend the independence ceremony of the new Republic of South Sudan tomorrow. He first stopped in Khartoum, telling reporters there that, while the people of North and South Sudan will soon live in different countries, their futures will remain closely linked.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared Somalia, which is facing the worst drought in six decades, as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. António Guterres saw the desperate situation of Somali refugees first-hand at the Dadaab camp, which is the world’s largest, in Kenya yesterday.

A worsening drought and increasing pressure on scarce resources threatened to push Ethiopia into “famine-like conditions”, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today in a Headquarters press conference on the heels of her recent visit to that country.

The Secretary-General says he is extremely worried by the situation in the Horn of Africa, where more than 11 million people need urgent assistance amid their worst drought in decades. He called an emergency meeting with UN agency heads today at which they agreed to do all they can to prevent a deepening crisis.

The Security Council adopted resolution 1999 (2011) today, on the admission of the Republic of South Sudan to the United Nations, without a vote, transferring its request to the General Assembly. The Secretary-General congratulated the Council, reiterating that a viable South will need a viable North, and vice versa.

The Security Council’s adoption in June of resolutions 1988 (2011) and 1989 (2011), which split the Al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions regimes, had been a significant step forward in the capacity of the Office of the Ombudsperson for the Security Council’s “Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee” to deliver fairness, transparency and due process, correspondents heard today at a Headquarters press conference.