Press Conference

“2010 is going to be a historical year for the biodiversity family,” Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, said, as he launched the logos for the International Year on Biodiversity and the tenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties, to be held in Nagoya, Japan, next October.

In an initiative to unite the world and bring awareness to the Millennium Development Goals, Dominican long-distance swimmer Marcos Diaz today announced plans to connect the five continents of the world, through four long-distance swims.

The top United Nations humanitarian official today briefed the press at Headquarters on the situations in Yemen, Philippines, Indonesia and Uganda after his recent visits to those countries.

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference held in New York today, 28 October 2009:

While the worst cases of religious intolerance in the past year involved killing in the name of a faith, repression of women was still the most common expression of both intolerance and extremism, Asma Jahangir, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief told correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon.

“My mandate covers any killings which are in contravention of international law, whether humanitarian law or human rights,” said Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

Fragile optimism for slow, but steady, progress in Somalia demonstrated that a Security Council strategy for increasing security and stability in the region would continue to unfold over the coming months, B. Lynn Pascoe, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs told reporters today during a Headquarters press conference.

The main purpose of reviewing every entry on the Consolidated List compiled by the Security Council Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee was to improve its credibility, Committee Chairman Thomas Mayr-Harting, Permanent Representative of Austria, said today at a Headquarters press conference.

Speaking at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, Walter Kälin, the Secretary-General’s representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons, hailed the recently adopted African Union Convention to protect displaced persons on the continent as the first binding treaty addressing the rights of “a huge number of people who need protection”.

“We are now at a […] critical juncture on the way towards achieving a legally binding agreement that would guide global action on climate change,” said Janos Pasztor, Director of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, updating correspondents on the climate change negotiations, at Headquarters this afternoon.