Peacekeeping missions had broad mandates ranging from fighting cholera to mitigating conflict, United Nations peacekeeping force commanders said today at a Headquarters press conference, held to coincide with a briefing they gave to the Security Council on the operational challenges they were facing.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
Two gorgeous little girls of an Afghan family that had returned from foreign exile would have had a shining future if they were born in the developed world, an Afghan-born novelist and goodwill envoy for the United Nations refugees agency said today at a Headquarters’ press conference.
The cost of the economic impact of violence on the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the last years was $9 trillion dollars, Michael Shank, Vice-President of the Institute for Economics and Peace, told correspondents today at Headquarters.
Africa can emerge as a global growth pole as it had become more attractive to foreign investors because of reforms and the resolution of conflicts, Rob Vos, Director of the Development Policy and Analysis Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, today told correspondents at a Headquarters briefing.
The annual report of the Secretary-General that provides an overview of the grave violations committed against children in conflict zones this year presented a “mixed picture”, correspondents were told at Headquarters today.
The Euro debt crisis remained the biggest threat to the world economy, according to a United Nations report launched today at a Headquarters press conference by United Nations Assistant-Secretary-General of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, and Rob Vos, lead author of the text and Director of the Department’s Development Policy and Analysis Division.
Significant progress had been made in only four of 90 internationally agreed environmental goals and objectives assessed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said an official today upon the release of the Programme’s latest report in its flagship Global Environment Outlook (GEO) series.
SG/SM/14336-ENV/DEV/1286
Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference on the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in New York, 6 June:
Through the direct engagement of its Member States, the General Assembly had been able to respond promptly to many important and serious situations during its current session, the President of the 193-nation body said today at a Headquarters press conference on a wide range of issues, including the upcoming Rio summit on sustainable development, the crisis in Syria, and combating violence against women.
Despite the weakening and scattering of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), it continued to be one of the gravest violators of children’s rights and must be stopped, a top United Nations official said, as she introduced a United Nations report on the subject to correspondents this afternoon.