Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the Forum on Global Health: The Tie That Binds, today, 15 June:

The recent move away from rhetoric about a “global war on terror”, which has dominated international responses since 11 September 2001, is a welcome development, noted experts on terrorism who met recently under United Nations auspices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That shift has now created space for a new discourse on terrorism and counter-terrorism in Africa, one that is better shaped by African realities and priorities.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, to be observed on 26 June:

The Special Committee on Decolonization this afternoon approved a draft resolution calling upon the Government of the United States to expedite a process that would allow the Puerto Rican people to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

The nearly 16-year United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was ended this evening, when a draft resolution that would have extended its mandate for just two weeks to allow divergent views to coalesce around a new security regime in the region, failed to pass, owing to a veto exercised by the Russian Federation.

At a General Assembly meeting today on implementation of the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the follow-up Political Declaration of 2006, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke of progress in the world’s AIDS response, citing heightened commitment, better prevention, improved treatment and more strategic use of funding, but stressed that, with about five new infections occurring for every two people on treatment, “now is not the time to falter”.

Petri Kristian Cozma, a student at the Helsinki School of Economics, was elected as the first General Assembly President of the Global Model United Nations Conference. Mr. Cozma and eight other university students will attend a workshop, organized by the Department of Public Information, at United Nations Headquarters from 17 to 19 June, to be trained in their roles as General Assembly officials for the Conference.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message for the High-Level Dialogue: Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific, in Manila today, 16 June:

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message for the second session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, in Geneva today, 16 June: