Despite very difficult and dangerous conditions, humanitarian aid organizations were committed to continuing their work in Syria, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said today.

The time has come to reflect on achievements, gaps and new challenges as the world approaches the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline year, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at Headquarters today.

The number of international migrants worldwide had reached 232 million in 2013, up from 175 million in 2000 and 154 million in 1990, United Nations officials said at a Headquarters press conference today, stressing the importance of accurate, timely and unbiased research for evidence-based policy making.

Education, economic empowerment, and reproductive rights were three key building blocks for eliminating poverty and achieving women’s emancipation, the new head of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) told reporters in New York today.

Hervé Ladsous, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told correspondents today that even though the world’s attention was currently focused on Syria — and rightly so — many of his Department’s concerns today had to do with various situations in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and Sudan and South Sudan.

The General Assembly would convene its sixty-eighth session on 17 September with more than 130 Heads of State and Government expected to address the 193-nation body from 24 September to 1 October, a senior United Nations conference management official said at a Headquarters press conference today.

Acknowledging attempts by many of his predecessors to move Security Council reform forward, the new President of the General Assembly said today that he would work for consensus on what that reform should look like.

While significant gains had been made since the historic World Conference on Human Rights — held in Vienna, Austria, in 1993 — more was urgently needed to fully realize those rights for millions of people around the world, a top United Nations official said today at a Headquarters press conference, spotlighting an upcoming event to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Vienna Conference.

Many child victims of violence, exploitation and abuse remain out of sight, are not reflected in statistics, are surrounded by stigma, and are very often neglected by their communities, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children and Armed Conflict said at a Headquarters press conference today.

Emerging from a period of difficult transition into a “decade of transformation”, Afghanistan’s upcoming April 2014 elections represented a critical juncture that would have wide-ranging implications for the country’s long-term peace and security, its Deputy Foreign Minister said at a Headquarters press conference today.