The United Nations would send humanitarian aid teams to the Libyan capital as early as next weekend as part of an agreement signed with Libyan authorities this week with the aim of ensuring safe passage to relief workers and much-needed civilian aid, particularly into areas heavily affected by fighting, the Organization’s senior humanitarian official said at Headquarters today.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
An innovative global campaign aimed at preventing domestic violence and abuse was launched today at a Headquarters press conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations.
In the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, the international scientific community had made considerable advances in understanding and mitigating earthquake risks and a major push was under way to integrate those technologies into Haiti’s reconstruction plans at all levels, said a senior scientist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at a Headquarters press conference today.
Despite very difficult circumstances, including the loss of many personnel, United Nations peacekeeping had passed critical tests in tackling “make-or-break” situations in Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti and Sudan, Secretariat officials said at Headquarters today. “Of course we’re not perfect, but peacekeepers made quite a difference,” Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said at the regular quarterly media briefing.
Updating the press on the latest developments regarding the work of the sixty-fifth General Assembly, Joseph Deiss, the 192-member body’s President, today highlighted a host of upcoming topical debates and took questions on the push for Palestinian statehood, as well as on the status of the negotiations to reform and expand the Security Council.
Forest loss was accelerating across forest basins in the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong regions, areas that together comprised 80 per cent of the world’s tropical forests, were home to two thirds of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and provided livelihoods to more than 1 billion people, Henri Djombo, Minister of Sustainable Development, Forests and Environment of the Congo, said today, announcing that his country would soon host a high-level summit to generate solutions.
With attacks on humanitarian workers increasing, aid organizations must return to core neutrality principles and negotiate safe access with all parties rather than abandoning the victims of conflict, according to a United Nations report launched this afternoon at Headquarters. “There are no places on earth where humanitarian organizations should not go or can not go,” Jan Egeland, former Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said as he introduced the study that he had co-authored.
With Côte d’Ivoire gripped by violence and political uncertainty, a senior United Nations human rights official today said that it was essential to break the cycle of impunity and retaliation that had taken root in the West African country, and he admonished the international community for failing to take concrete steps following the 2002 civil war to ensure accountability as a way to ward off future instability.
As fighting continued to rage in Libya, top humanitarian priorities there were bringing about at least a temporary ceasefire and acquiring additional civilian assistance for the aid effort, a United Nations humanitarian official said this afternoon.
Over the tragic 30-year arc of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, solid progress had been made in raising awareness about the disease and bringing down infection rates, but monies devoted to tackling it were drying up, the price of the drugs to treat it were skyrocketing, and rampant discrimination had left at the margins of life-saving interventions communities critical to the fight, civil society representatives said at a Headquarters press conference today.