14 March 2014 – Wrapping a historic visit to Nigeria, the United Nations rights chief today congratulated the Government for its efforts towards tackling “very difficult human rights problems”, but stressed the need to urgently resolve the conflict in the country’s northeast, end corruption, and protect its vulnerable populations, including the LGBT community, which ‘lives in fear”. “Since Nigeria’s transition to democracy, much has been achieved on the human rights front,’ noted Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at a press conference during her four-day visit to assess the situation in the country. “At the same time,” she…
Author: UN News
14 March 2014 – Local masons in Timbuktu today started to lay down the first earthen bricks to reconstruct World Heritage mausoleums damaged when radical Islamists occupied the northern part of the country in 2012. “The rehabilitation of the cultural heritage of Timbuktu is crucial for the people of Mali, for the city’s residents and for the world,” said Irina Bokova, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), marking today’s ceremony. “The very name Timbuktu sparks the imagination of millions of people in all parts of the planet,” she added. Timbuktu was an economic, intellectual and spiritual…
15 March 2014 – With nearly 13 million Syrians uprooted from their homes, senior United Nations officials warn that without a political solution to the conflict, which today enters its fourth year, Syria and its people face years more of destruction and continued brutality. “Children, women and men are being used as pawns by parties to the conflict in their battle for territorial advantage,” said the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos. An entire generation of children has been traumatized and brutalized. Hospitals and school playgrounds have been attacked, and residential neighbourhoods are flattened by barrel bombs, she noted. “Our…
14 March 2014 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appealed yet again for the international community to help bring the rival Syrian parties closer on concrete measures to end the conflict, saying “it is not enough for representatives of the Government and opposition to be in the same room, what matters most is what they do there.”“The political process is in crisis,” Mr. Ban told reporters after the closed door session with the UN General Assembly. “After two rounds of talks [in Geneva], neither side is displaying any will to compromise or any true awareness of the I strongly urge the…
14 March 2014 – The Security Council today extended for another year the United Nations mission assisting Libya, as preparations in the North African country turn to upcoming parliamentary elections due to be held in June. In the resolution adopted today, the 15-member Council wrote that as an immediate priority, the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) would ensure the success of the democratic transition process in the country, which has been under way since the toppling of Muammar al-Qadhafi three years ago. This includes promoting, facilitating and providing technical advice, as well as assisting a single, inclusive and transparent…
15 March 2014 – Owing to the negative vote of one of its permanent members, the United Nations Security Council today failed to adopt a draft resolution which urged countries not to recognize the results of this weekend’s referendum in Crimea. Thirteen of the Council’s 15 members voted in favour of the draft text, russia voted against, and China abstained. A veto by any of the Council’s five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – means a resolution cannot be adopted. The resolution would have reaffirmed Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity”…
14 March 2014 – United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Šimonovic, announced today the immediate deployment of a UN monitoring team throughout crisis-torn Ukraine to help establish the facts surrounding alleged human rights violations, including in Crimea, and serve to de-escalate tensions in the country. Speaking via video conference from Kiev, Mr. Šimonovic told reporters in New York that during his short visit to Ukraine, he had identified chronic human rights violations; some dating from the Soviet era, and others, such as excessive use of force and arbitrary detentioI am gravely concerned about the situation in Crimea, where…
13 March 2014 – The United Nations continued efforts on multiple fronts to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine, with a senior human rights official holding meetings today in the capital, Kiev, while in New York, the Security Council held its sixth urgent session on the crisis, hearing the UN political chief stress that the path to a peaceful resolution is still open – “let us seize it.” The Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the UN requested the Council to convene urgently “due to the deterioration of the situation in the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, Ukraine, which threatens the territorial integrity…
14 March 2014 – Deeply concerned about violent confrontations between the police and members of opposition in Burundi, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging both the government and political parties to de-escalate tensions and to campaign against political violence ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015. In a statement released yesterday evening by his spokesperson, Mr. Ban deplored the “growing restrictions on the freedom of expression, association and assembly, especially the prohibition and disruption of opposition meetings by the police and the youth wing of the ruling party”. Respecting these freedoms and other human rights is a precondition for…
13 March 2014 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “honoured” to meet at Headquarters with three religious leaders from the Central African Republic (CAR), whom he described as a “powerful symbol of their country’s longstanding tradition of peaceful coexistence.” The UN chief thanked the religious leaders – Mgr. Dieudonne Nzapalainga, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bangui, Imam Oumar Kobine Layama, President of the Islamic Council in the Central African Republic, and Reverend Nicolas Guérékoyame-Gbangou, President of the CAR’s Evangelical Alliance – and warned that their legacy of peaceful coexistence stands “under threat.” The country has been war-torn since…