During its 2010 regular session, which began on 25 January and ended today, the Committee on Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) considered applications submitted by 246 entities, recommending that the Economic and Social Council grant consultative status to 76 of them, while closing 19 applications.

During a high-level panel on social integration that opened the session’s second day, delegations in the Commission on Social Development today wrestled with finding reasons why many social integration policies were inadequate, with many agreeing they had been developed on a piecemeal basis, and fashioned into solutions seldom accompanied by implementation and evaluation frameworks.

The following Security Council statement on the Secretary-General’s briefing on the London Conference on Afghanistan was read out today by Council President Gérard Araud (France):

The economic slowdown had weakened the world’s social safety net, but delegates of countries from Nicaragua to Kenya, speaking during the Commission for Social Development’s forty-eighth session today, reported some progress in improving the socio-economic situation of their most vulnerable and marginalized citizens thanks to a range of social integration programmes.

The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency has announced that Geoffrey Shaw (Australia) has been appointed Representative of the Director General to the United Nations and Director of the IAEA Office at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Under the theme “The urgency of addressing the permanent status issues -- borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, water”, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean will convene the International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace at the Dolmen Hotel in Qawra, Malta, on 12 and 13 February.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message calling for observance of the Olympic Truce on 12 February, 2010:

Just days ahead of the opening of the XXI Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the General Assembly took note today of the solemn appeal made by its President to all United Nations Member States to observe the ancient tradition of the “Olympic Truce”, during which warring parties would stop fighting and lay down their arms in celebration of the Games.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s video message to the Munich Security Conference on 6 February: