The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) considered the absence at the highest levels of the developed world at the United Nations Conference on the World Financial Crisis and its Impact on Development to be a form of disrespect, the Prime Minister of Belize and current chairman of CARICOM, Dean Barrow, said today at a Headquarters press conference.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be eliminated in favour of regional monetary reserves or other collective measures, President Rafael Correa Delgado of Ecuador said at Headquarters this morning. “Wipe it off the face of the planet,” President Correa said at a press conference following his address to the Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development.
Failure to address sexual violence as a core issue in peace negotiations allowed horrendous abuse of women to continue in post-conflict societies, participants in a high-level colloquium said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.
Regional integration in Africa was essential for sustained development -- especially within the context of the current global crisis -- and could help to enhance competitiveness, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) told correspondents today at Headquarters.
Negotiations on the long-debated outcome document for the United Nations summit on the world financial crisis, which begins tomorrow, had come to a successful conclusion, General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann announced this morning at a Headquarters press conference.
Voicing the interests of civil society a day before the United Nations begins a three-day summit on the world financial crisis, the Global Social Economy Group called today for sweeping reform of international financial and economic institutions and practices that had contributed to the current global economic turmoil.
As authorities in Guinea-Bissau struggled to ensure social and political stability following a wave of high-profile political assassinations, the situation was “calm, but extremely fragile”, the top United Nations envoy in the country said today as he urged the international community to step up its support for planned reforms in “every sector, because every sector has critical needs”.
The United Nations should be the place that “educates the innocent and the victims” on how to deal with the world economic and financial crisis, Martin Khor, Executive Director of South Centre, said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.
Flagging sickle-cell anaemia as one of the world’s most common but most misunderstood health problems, a panel featuring African health ministers and medical professionals urged Governments, health workers and even families to use 19 June as an opportunity to raise awareness of sickle-cell anaemia in order to “bring this disease out of the shadows” and help improve the quality of life for people living with it.
Energy was central to all aspects of development, the Ambassador of Belarus said today, urging United Nations Member States to bridge the current “energy divide” by, among other things, creating a global mechanism to ensure that all countries, especially developing nations and transition economies, gained fair and adequate access to technologies for new and renewable sources of energy.