At a Headquarters press conference today, Bolivian Ambassador Pablo Solόn strongly objected to a negotiating text for a new climate deal given during working sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, earlier this month. He noted that final texts produced by the Chair of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on long-cooperative action absolutely did not reflect the submissions of his country.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
Despite many successes over the past year in protecting children in situations of armed conflict, many challenges remained, senior United Nations officials in that field said at a Headquarters press conference today. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict said one of those challenges was gaining access to non-State actors with whom her Office could negotiate action plans for the release of children recruited as combatants by armed groups.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea again firmly rejected today charges that it was responsible for the 26 March sinking of the warship Cheonan, as Sin Son Ho, its Permanent Representative to the United Nations, warned that his country would respond militarily to any Security Council condemnation over the sinking of the Republic of Korea vessel, which Seoul blamed on Pyongyang.
The Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact Office said today that, while corporate responsibility continues to be high on the business agenda despite the worldwide economic downturn, many companies had nevertheless failed to implement key policies on human rights and anti-corruption.
Non-governmental organizations had been crucial partners in efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and while their voices were many and diverse, they carried a common message: the Goals must be understood in the context of the need for new development paths.
Street gangs showed surprising resilience to common law enforcement tactics, such as police sweeps, curfews, and longer prison sentences, according to the tenth annual "Small Arms Survey 2010: Gangs, Groups, and Guns", which was launched today at Headquarters. It also notes that, while such tactics were designed to disrupt gang structures, eliminate leadership and deter youths, in many cases, they failed in their short-term objectives or even increased insecurity.
A global network of child rights monitors today called on the Security Council to prioritize child concerns during its planned visit to Afghanistan, where it said more than 1,000 children had been killed in 2009 as a result of aerial bombings, night raids, landmines and other explosives.
At a Headquarters press conference today, the General Assembly President elect for the sixty-fifth session, Joseph Deiss ( Switzerland), said that the priorities of his tenure would be global and environmental governance, human rights, the environment and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
The International Criminal Court, unfit for its purpose and marred by double standards, was destroying peace processes in sub-Saharan Africa, David Hoile, an African scholar and public affairs consultant, said today at a Headquarters news conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of the Sudan to the United Nations.
With the scale and complexity of United Nations peacekeeping operations increasing dramatically over the past decade, new and innovative approaches to disarmament, demobilization and reintegration — driven more by practitioners in the field and their local partners than by diplomats in New York — were beginning to make a difference on the ground, a senior peacekeeping official said today.