Press Conference

Everyday people — from a Japanese oyster fisherman cultivating his business by planting trees in an estuary devastated by the 2011 tsunami, to two Michigan teenagers campaigning to ensure Girl Scout cookies and other palm oil-based products were deforestation-free — were among the panellists sharing their grass-roots approaches to forest preservation at a Headquarters press conference today.

French fashion designer agnès b. and a panel of ocean experts welcomed today the arrival in New York of the Tara Oceans Expedition, which was poised to complete a three-year journey to gather critical information on how climate change would further damage the world’s major bodies of water.

Briefing correspondents at Headquarters on the situations in South Sudan and other African countries, Hervé Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said that tackling the myriad challenges on the continent required the United Nations to continue strengthening its partnership with the African Union and other regional actors.

The newly appointed Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria announced a unique partnership today between her office and the United Nations Millennium Campaign, aimed at accelerating her country’s attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. Describing the partnership as a key element in her country’s “countdown” strategy, Precious Gbeneol said it would greatly help realize the Millennium Goals, not only in Nigeria but throughout Africa.

The widely circulated Internet reports that he had graphically threatened the Prime Minister of Qatar prior to the recent Security Council vote on Syria were “blatant lies”, Vitaly Churkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, said at Headquarters today.

An advisory opinion on damages from climate change by the International Court of Justice, proposed by small island States and others, would complement and not conflict with efforts to create a negotiated international climate regime, the President of Palau said this afternoon. “While we continue to negotiate, we should renew our faith in a system of law that has guided States’ actions in the past and gives them legitimacy today,” President Johnson Toribiong told correspondents.

While it was currently seized with the ongoing situation in Syria and a range of issues around the world, the Security Council’s main focus in February would be a members’ mission to Haiti, according to the Permanent Representative of Togo, which holds the body’s rotating presidency for the month.

The top priority for UN Women in 2012 would be a renewed push for women’s economic empowerment and political participation as change was demanded in the Arab world and elsewhere, the Head of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women told correspondents at headquarters this morning.

South Africa had achieved its objective of focusing the Security Council’s attention this month on a number of important and pressing Africa-related issues, Council President and South Africa’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Baso Sangqu, said during a Headquarters news conference this afternoon. “We are satisfied with the progress we have made during this presidency,”Mr.Sangqu said.

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference, held in New York on 25 January: