Mr. President, Excellencies, Thank you for the invitation to join Stephen O’Brien and Ivan Simonovic at this meeting. I will obviously defer to both Stephen and to Ivan on the subjects of their own competence and professional knowledge. And I will still refer to the linkages that exist between my...

The Secretary-General met today with H.E. Mr. Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The Secretary-General and the Foreign Minister exchanged views on the situation in Syria. The Secretary-General emphasized that the coming weeks were crucial in advancing a political...

GENEVA (Issued as received) - The participants in the thirty-sixth round of the Geneva International Discussions have just completed their work. In Working Group I dealing with security issues, the participants discussed extensively the fatal incident, which occurred in Khurcha on May 19. In this...

The Secretary-General condemns the abhorrent attack carried out on 12 June in Idlib city, Syria, which hit a vegetable market and the only bakery in the area. The apparent air strike took place while a ceasefire stipulated in the Four Towns Agreement, which covers Idlib city, had reportedly been...

GENEVA (Issued as received) – The United Nations Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent today expressed alarm over reports of violence toward people of African descent in Colombia, and called on the authorities to take concrete and urgent measures to protect the Afro-Colombian...

On 25 May 2016, Côte d'Ivoire joined the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Protocol I on Non-detectable Fragments, Protocol II on Mines, Booby-traps and Other Devices, Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons and Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War. Ambassador Tehmina Janjua of...

The Human Rights Council will hold its thirty-second regular session from 13 June to 1 July 2016 in the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The three-week session will include a high-level panel discussion on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of...

Arabic version Geneva (Issued as received) – Crimes against humanity have been committed in a widespread and systematic manner in Eritrean detention facilities, military training camps and other locations across the country over the past 25 years, according to a new report by the UN Commission of...

Adopts Concluding Observations on Reports of Eight States and General Comment on Public Budgets to Realize the Rights of the Child The Committee on the Rights of the Child this afternoon concluded its seventy-second session after adopting its concluding observations and recommendations on the...

Following the joint press stake-out earlier today in Geneva between the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Mr. Staffan de Mistura and Senior Advisor, Jan Egeland, the Special Envoy briefed the Security Council on the current situation in Syria. This was his first briefing to the Council since the...