Note to Correspondents

At this critical time for democratization efforts in several parts of the world, the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) will open an exhibition of photographs illustrating its work on Monday, 9 May, at 6 p.m. in the Main Gallery of the United Nations Visitors’ Lobby. The images in the exhibition illustrate selected democracy projects in the field, funded by UNDEF and implemented by civil society organizations in Africa, the Arab region, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

A panel discussion on “Getting the Facts Right”, to be held at United Nations Headquarters on Wednesday, 4 May, will seek to draw lessons from the recent past from the perspective of “If we had known then what we know now”. The event, to be held in the Dag Hammarskjöld Auditorium, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., will promote the launch of the 2007 edition of the United Nations Yearbook, which has been released for the first time as an e-book.

Advertising agencies from Sweden, Hungary and China, among other countries, will be honoured for public service advertising on Thursday, 5 May, during the 2011 New York Festivals/United Nations Department of Public Information International Advertising Awards at Skylight West in New York City.

To mark the sixty-sixth anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the United Nations Department of Public Information will screen the film The Relief of Belsen on 2 May, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Economic and Social Council Chamber, North Lawn Building at New York Headquarters.

A photo exhibition entitled “25 Years after Chernobyl: Cooperation for Sustainable Development” will open with a formal ceremony in the South Gallery of the Visitors Lobby at 2 p.m. on Monday, 25 April.

In observance of World Malaria Day, an exhibition celebrating individuals who have contributed to the fight against the disease will open at 6 p.m. on Monday, 25 April, in the North-east Gallery of the Visitors Lobby at United Nations Headquarters.

International television programming and films focusing on issues of importance to the United Nations will be honoured on Tuesday, 12 April, at the New York Festivals Television and Film Awards Gala at the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

Reductions in fertility help countries in their development efforts, both at the national level and with the well-being of families and individuals, according to a report of the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to this year’s session of the Commission on Population and Development, starting at United Nations Headquarters in New York on Monday, 11 April.

Seventeen years ago, in 1994, in the space of three months, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in Rwanda, in what came to be known as the Rwanda genocide. In observance of the seventeenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, a commemoration will take place in the Economic and Social Council Chamber at United Nations Headquarters, on Thursday, 7 April, from 5 to 6 p.m.

The third annual forum, “Envision: Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries”, which opens this Friday in New York with a focus on poverty and hunger, will feature three distinctive documentaries, alongside addresses from United Nations Goodwill Ambassadors Harry Belafonte and George McGovern.