High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the International Commission of Inquiry report published on 22 February concluded that the Syrian Government “has manifestly failed in its responsibility to protect the population”. It further stated that anti-Government groups have committed abuses, but not “comparable in scale and organization to those carried out by the State”.

“I feel like they stole something from me,” said a young Guinean survivor of female genital mutilation today, as she calmly recounted the experience of being cut by a village doctor at the age of five, and appealed strongly for African Governments to take the lead in bringing the dangerous centuries-old practice to an end.

This evening, the Secretary-General will meet with the Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States, Kofi Annan. And they will speak to reporters at the 2nd floor stakeout position in the North Lawn Building here at United Nations Headquarters at approximately 7:15 p.m.

The Secretary-General and Kofi Annan, the Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and League of Arab States for Syria, met yesterday evening and then they briefed reporters. They both emphasized the urgent need to end the violence in Syria and gain access for humanitarian assistance.

Challenges and opportunities in North Africa and the Middle East and the situations in Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan would be highlighted at the Security Council in March, the permanent representative of the United Kingdom, which holds the body’s rotating presidency for the month, told correspondents this afternoon.

With efforts “creeping along too slowly” to boost the number of women politicians and deepen the level of women’s participation in political affairs, senior United Nations and parliamentary officials today made strong calls on Governments and political parties to demonstrate the will and courage to bring more women to the decision-making table, particularly in the Arab World.

Kofi Annan, the Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States on the Syrian crisis, will visit the region from 7 March, with the aim of seeking an urgent end to all violence and human rights violations, and to initiate the effort to promote a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis.

It pays to be well prepared, particularly where natural hazards and disaster risk reduction were concerned, the top United Nations official responsible for mitigating disaster risks worldwide said today.

An arrest warrant had been issued against Sudan’s Defence Minister Abdel Raheem Mohamed Hussein for his alleged commission of atrocities in the country’s Darfur region, Louis Moreno Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told reporters today at a Headquarters press briefing.

This morning, the Secretary-General spoke at an event with the theme “Gender Equality for Sustainable Business”. He said that empowerment and sustainable development have been and will remain his top priorities for his second term, and that we cannot achieve sustainability — at a corporate or a global level — without empowering women.