At the opening of a two-day High-Level Meeting on Youth today, the Secretary-General urged the international community to expand opportunities for young men and women and to support them as agents of change.

Condemning Friday’s bombing in Oslo and the shooting massacre at a Norwegian summer camp, delegates and youth advocates said today that this week’s General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Youth would aim to end such extremist behaviour and guide young people on a path of tolerance and understanding. “We are here to prevent what happened in Norway in the future,” Jean-Francis Zinsou (Benin), a co-facilitator of the Meeting, said at a Headquarters press conference.

The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said today that, without a credible political path forward, accompanied by more far-reaching steps on the ground, the viability of the Palestinian Authority and its state-building agenda — and of the two-State solution itself — cannot be taken for granted.

The Secretary-General strongly condemned the attack against a UNIFIL convoy on the coastal road near the town of Saida. The UN Force says that six peacekeepers were wounded in the explosion. Investigation is under way to determine the facts and circumstances of the incident.

President Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire today sought to assure the international community that his topmost priority was not to punish or seek revenge against his opponents, but to strengthen State institutions, restore the rule of law, protect the human rights of all Ivorians without distinction, fight against impunity and ensure national reconciliation.

Fresh from addressing the Security Council, the commanders of four United Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa and the Middle East addressed a Headquarters press conference today on their efforts to protect civilians in Darfur, address charges of human trafficking among senior peacekeepers in Liberia and, more generally, implement measures to ensure that troops everywhere were held to the highest standards of conduct.

A year after the General Assembly’s adoption of a landmark resolution on the human right to water and sanitation, President Evo Morales Ayma of Bolivia appealed to the international community to ensure its availability to all as a public good, rather than a private commodity to be bought and sold.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that 12.4 million people are now in need of immediate assistance in the Horn of Africa and that $1.4 billion is still required to help them. Without additional contributions, the famine could spread throughout Somalia and into neighbouring countries within the next month or two.

While many Governments were actively pursuing reforms to dismantle legal barriers holding back women’s empowerment, millions of women still faced an uphill battle in the struggle to undo negative stereotypes, lock down property rights and successfully confront sexual harassment in the workplace, the Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women said today.

In a statement yesterday, the Secretary-General strongly condemned the use of force against the civilian population in Syria and called on the Government to halt this violent offensive at once. The Security Council will be briefed in consultations on the situation at 5 p.m. by the Department of Political Affairs.