Press Conference

Following is a transcript of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press conference held in New York today, 6 June:

At a Headquarters press conference today, Xavier Bertrand, the Minister of Labour, Employment and Health of France, outlined his Government’s priorities during its presidency of the G-20, which would emphasize strengthening the social dimension of globalization to ensure that the worldwide movement towards integration was better aligned with popular concerns for employment, prosperity and social security.

With a new United Nations report showing exponential progress in the struggle against HIV/AIDS over the past 30 years, next week’s high-level meeting on the response to the epidemic would be an opportunity to end much of the harm it caused, Deputy-Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said at Headquarters today.

HIV/AIDS and transnational organized crime would be among the major topics for discussion by the Security Council later this month, as the body also remained seized of situations including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Libya and others, according to the Permanent Representative of Gabon, which holds the Council presidency for June.

A United Nations-backed sustainable electricity partnership made a strong case today for the transformative role that small-scale, off-grid projects could play in bringing clean, reliable energy and electricity to billions of the world’s “energy poor” people living in remote communities and tied to burning coal or heavy oil.

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) briefed the press at Headquarters today on a wide range of topics, covering his recent travels on behalf of the world body and highlighting his meetings with political groupings and Government officials on matters, such as Security Council reform, global governance and support for the least developed countries.

With major global meetings on the horizon, members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said today that ensuring the “full, meaningful and equal” participation of indigenous representatives had taken on a truly paramount importance. Speaking at a Headquarters press conference to mark the end of the Forum’s tenth session, members of the Forum said indigenous participation in decision-making processes had been an overarching theme during the session.

Officials of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations stressed the importance of strengthening the rule of law as a key part of peacekeeping, as they marked the ninth International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

The world became less peaceful for the third year in a row, chiefly due to a surge in the risk of terrorism and fallout from the wave of civil unrest sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, according to the 2011 Global Peace Index, which also notes that violence cost the world economy more than $8 trillion in 2010.

As output growth remained feeble in the developed world, robustly growing emerging economies in Asia and Latin America would continue to drive global economic recovery for the rest of the year and during 2012, United Nations economists said this afternoon during a Headquarters news conference.