At a Headquarters press conference today, to announce the annual Treaty Event taking place at Headquarters from 23 to 25 and 28 to 29 September on the margins of the high-level segment of the General Assembly’s general debate, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel, Patricia O’Brien, said the Optional Protocol to the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights would be a highlight of the wide range of featured treaties.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
“The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are more than a set of targets – they are a solemn promise to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable,” United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today at a Headquarters press briefing to launch the 2009 report of the MDG Gap Task Force.
There was evidence indicating Israel had committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the Gaza conflict and actions amounting to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, it was reported today by the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict, upon the release of the mission’s official report and recommendations.
Noting that Member States had lauded the United Nations’ recently announced plan to chart a new, improved course for peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said this afternoon that it was vital that all peacekeeping actors work in the coming weeks and months to ensure those operations were robust and that they adequately protected civilians.
There was a marked discrepancy between the global demand for democratic governance and its supply, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, said at a Headquarters press conference this morning to launch a new global poll on political tolerance.
Lynn B. Pascoe, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, outlined, at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, a wide range of political issues confronting his Department on the eve of the opening of the sixty-fourth session of the General Assembly tomorrow.
While fundamental decisions had to be taken about the 2011 referendum, the security of South Sudan was threatened both by internal conflicts and Lord’s Resistance Army activities, a top official of the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) said today at a Headquarters press conference.
Each year, more people killed themselves than died in war, terrorist activities and homicides, correspondents at Headquarters were told on the occasion of World Suicide Prevention Day, with the theme: “Suicide Prevention in Different Cultures”.
The Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Monetary and Financial System had helped to make the United Nations an important player in the financial realm over the past year, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, outgoing President of the General Assembly, said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.
The real impact of the global financial and economic crisis had yet to be faced, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of the General Assembly, said at Headquarters today.