Public information

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Maria Dotsenko of Ukraine as Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Tehran, Iran.  Ms. Dotsenko assumes her duties on 15 January.

The United Nations today released the sixty-fifth volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, covering the Organization’s global activities in 2011.

Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks to the General Assembly high-level meeting on the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society, in New York today:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Vladimir Kuznetsov of the Russian Federation as Director of the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in Moscow, Russian Federation.  Mr. Kuznetsov assumed his duties today.

The Security Council today adopted an historic resolution on youth, peace and security, which for the first time in its history focuses entirely on the role of young men and women in peacebuilding and countering violent extremism.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Robert Lawrence Skinner of the United States as Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Washington, D.C.

Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message, delivered by Lenni Montiel, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, to the second informal interactive consultation with stakeholders of the World Summit on the Information Society, in New York on 19 October:

NEW YORK, 16 October (Office of Information and Communication Technology) — The United Nations today announced that Cristian Felix has won the #VisualizeChange data challenge, which aims to engage the public in sharing ideas to reduce human loss and suffering from crisis by looking at data in new ways.  The competition is part of the activities linked to the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit and is hosted on the Unite Ideas platform.

As Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon travels to China to attend a commemorative event in Beijing marking the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the United Nations Department of Public Information has announced that the flagship United Nations handbook, Basic Facts about the United Nations, is being published today in Chinese for the first time in nearly 29 years.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: