Just days away from the kick-off of the 21st United Nations climate change conference — widely known as COP21 — the UN is reminding its main actors that this conference must be a turning point for climate action.
On 31 October 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted the historic resolution 1325, drawing attention to the differential impact of armed conflict on women, their exclusion from conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and the inextricable links between gender equality and international peace and security.
Peter Sutherland is the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration. A strong advocate for the rights of migrants – and for action to increase the benefits of migration for countries of origin, destination, and migrants alike – he works to foster cooperation on issues such as protecting migrants affected by crises and ensuring their role in the development process. A former Attorney General of Ireland, Mr. Sutherland has served as EU Commissioner for competition policy, and headed the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark was elected President of the General Assembly’s seventieth session on 15 June 2015. At the time of his election, he was the Speaker of the Danish Parliament. A veteran parliamentarian and government minister, and an economist by training, he was his country’s Foreign Minister from 2000 to 2001. As Finance Minister, from 1993 to 2000, he directed economic reforms that led to a strengthened Danish economy.
Richard Curtis is known around the world as the film-maker behind international hits such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mr. Bean, Love Actually, and Bridget Jones’s Diary, as well as for his involvement with the charity Comic Relief.
Stephen O'Brien has hit the ground running since taking up his post a couple of months ago as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, having seen first-hand the devastation wrought by ongoing conflicts in South Sudan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
It has been six months since Ján Kubiš took up the post of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). Over that period, the Slovakian national and his team have had to face considerable challenges – much like the country itself.
Chris Gunness has served as the Spokesperson and Director of Advocacy and Communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for almost a decade.
The Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has been tasked with reinvigorating an inclusive political process towards ending the crisis in the country, based on the aims set out in the 2012 Geneva Communiqué, which was adopted by the first international conference on the issue and has been endorsed by the UN security Council.
Actor and environmental activist Robert Redford paid his first visit to the United Nations Headquarters in New York this week to address the UN General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Climate Change, which aimed to energize multilateral cooperation on the issue ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. In the French capital, countries will discuss an agreement intended to succeed to the landmark Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
