commission

A strong press and robust broadcasting institutions are critical for achieving a sustainable peace and credible governance in post-conflict countries, senior United Nations officials told delegates attending a conference on peacebuilding today.

The United Nations peacebuilding arm is making steady progress and has produced concrete results in the four post-conflict countries placed under its direction in the two years since its work started, the Security Council was told in a briefing today.

Representatives of the United Nations, individual Member States, regional organizations, the private sector and civil society have gathered today in New York to discuss how to increase the level of international involvement in Sierra Leone’s efforts to make the transition from years of civil conflict towards eventual stability and prosperity.

Climate change, industrialization, air pollution and the need to boost clean energy supplies for developing countries are urgent global challenges that must be addressed in concert, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today as he opened a gathering of dozens of environmental ministers at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Girls from around the world – including a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an HIV-positive rape victim from Zambia, and a child-labourer from Nepal – have come together to share the experiences that made them activists at an event at United Nations Headquarters.

Women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming are key to tackling challenges, such as poverty, discrimination, educational gaps, high maternal mortality, disease and other ills, a senior United Nations official has told the world body’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Much work remains to be done before goals of gender equality – and their resulting positive impact on primary-school enrolment, maternal mortality rates and women’s economic independence – are reached, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General told the opening of the 51st session of the UN’s women’s commission today.

The world is beginning to recognize that empowering women and girls is key to development thanks to a United Nations women’s commission that is “ahead of its time,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, marking the body’s 60th anniversary.

In what United Nations officials hailed as an historic milestone in global efforts to help countries avert a relapse into bloodshed after emerging from conflict, the first meeting of the newly created Peacebuilding Commission was held today at UN Headquarters in New York.

Warning that the proposed Human Rights Council could “unravel” if Member States made the wrong moves in the ongoing negotiations over the body, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today that the Council was of utmost importance to all nations and the stakes in the ongoing debate were “very high.”