UN Calendar |
January 17
The UN Secretary-General addresses the 4th World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women begins its 48th session in Geneva, which will run through February 4.
The 128th session of the Executive Council of the World Food Programme (WFP) begins in Geneva.
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) releases its latest Global and Regional Investment Trends report in Geneva.
January 18
B. Lynn Pascoe, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, speaks at an Institute for Inclusive Security event titled, Women Mediating Conflict, in Washington.
The Security Council holds a briefing and consultations on Sudan.
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) elects the President and other members of the Bureau for 2011.
January 19
The Security Council holds an open debate on the Middle East.
The Secretary-General begins an official visit to Oman.
The second meeting of the UN Group of Eminent Persons for the Least Developed Countries takes place in Brussels.
January 20
The Security Council hears a briefing on Haiti.
January 21
The Security Council holds an open debate on post-conflict peacebuilding and institution-building.
January 27
International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
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Security Council's January Calendar | |
New UN Reports | |
Secretary-General's Reports
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From fighting poverty to building safer world, UN chief outlines priorities for 2011
From promoting sustainable development and mitigating climate change to empowering women to keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today laid out the United Nations agenda for the coming year.
 "Success in rising to the challenge does not belong to any one of us," he told the 192-member General Assembly, listing eight priorities for 2011.
"It depends on all of us, together. You were crucial to generating the progress that we have achieved in recent years. And your continued engagement, initiative and leadership are essential as we take on this ambitious agenda."
Speaking at a news conference after the meeting, he cautioned: "If 2010 was a challenging year for the United Nations, 2011 will be even more so."
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Strong voter turnout in South Sudan referendum
The week-long independence referendum in South Sudan passed its half-way mark on January 12 with a continued large turnout, and a United Nations monitor said there should be no need to extend the vote, which could split Africa's largest country in two.
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January 11, 2011 - Poll workers take a voter's fingerprint in Wau, capital of West Bahr el Ghazal State, South Sudan, on the third day of balloting in the South's historic referendum on independence. UN Photo/Paul Banks |
The UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) cited figures released by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) showing that 46 percent of the electorate in southern Sudan, where the vast majority of the nearly four million eligible voters live, cast their ballots in the first two days of the seven-day poll - the culmination of the 2005 peace agreement that ended 20 years of war between the country's north and south.
Sixty percent of the electorate have to vote for the outcome to be valid. In northern Sudan and abroad, where several hundred thousand southerners are also eligible to vote, the SSRC reported a 25 percent turnout for the first two days.
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Related Headlines
Three crew members of UN humanitarian air service abducted in Darfur
Sudan: UN intensifies patrols after clashes in north-south border region
Joint UN-African mission investigating further clashes in North Darfur |
UN marks one-year anniversary of Haiti earthquake
On the one-year anniversary of the earthquake which devastated Haiti, the United Nations remembered the disaster's victims in memorial events in Port-au-Prince, New York and elsewhere around the world.  | |
January 12, 2011 - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pays his respects to the hundreds of thousands of victims of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, among which over one hundred UN staff members, at a one-year anniversary commemoration of the earthquake at UN headquarters in New York. UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras |
In the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, staff at the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) gathered for memorial events which included a formal ceremony and the unveiling of a monument in honor of UN staff members who were killed in the earthquake. The head of the UN's peacekeeping operations, Under-Secretary-General Alain Le Roy, attended the events. At UN headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took part in a wreath-laying ceremony on Wednesday afternoon, timed to coincide with the hour at which the earthquake struck - at 4:53 p.m. on Tuesday, January 12, 2010. Participants were asked to solemnly observe silence for a period of 47 seconds, which was the duration of the earthquake. Members of the Security Council extended their condolences to the families of those killed and expressed their deepest concern for all those whose lives continue to be touched by the tragedy. Read more
Related Headlines
Haiti: speeding earthquake recovery 'absolute priority' for 2011, UN says
UN staff union mourns colleagues killed in 2010
Haiti: UN human rights chief urges greater attention to fundamental rights |
Côte d'Ivoire: Ban warns of consequences for those attacking UN peacekeepers
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned forces loyal to the outgoing Côte d'Ivoire president, who has refused to step down despite his election defeat, that they will be held accountable for their criminal attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in the country.
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December 21, 2010 - The envoy of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Military Adviser General Babacar Gaye (centre) and Abdul Hafiz (left), United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) Force Commander General, visit the troops providing security at the Hotel Golf in Abidjan, where President Alassane Ouattara and his prime minister, Guillaume Soro, are residing. UN Photo/Basile Zoma |
At the same time, the UN humanitarian chief stressed that the lives and livelihoods of many thousands of Ivorians were threatened by the deteriorating crisis sparked by Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to leave office despite opposition leader Alassane Ouattara's UN-certified and internationally-recognized victory in November's run-off election.
In a statement, Mr. Ban voiced deep concern that regular and irregular forces loyal to Mr. Gbagbo have begun to attack and burn vehicles belonging to the nearly 9,000-strong UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI), which has been supporting efforts over the past seven years to reunify a country split by civil war in 2002 into a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north.
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Week in Pictures
U.S. Senator John Kerry Visits Displaced Sudanese in Darfur
January 7, 2011 -- U.S. Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (left), hears from a Sudanese man displaced by fighting between government and rebel forces in Darfur during a visit to Shangel Tubaya, Sudan. The man is one of thousands who have fled to Shangel Tubaya, North Darfur, where the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) maintains a presence. UN Photo/Albert Gonzalez Farran
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South Sudanese Vote in Historic Referendum
January 9, 2011 - A South Sudanese voter shows her inked finger and registration card after casting a ballot in the South's historic referendum on independence, on the first day of polling, in Omdurman, near Khartoum, capital of Sudan. UN Photo/Paul Banks
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Week in Numbers
247
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says that as of January 12, 247 people were reported to have been killed since the beginning of violence, up from 210 a week ago. There had also been 49 disappearances. This included 20 new cases that had been reported since January 6. Turning to allegations of a third mass grave, UNOCI military observers had been informed by telephone on January 10 that a grave containing "many bodies" had been found in Issia, Western/Central Côte d'Ivoire.
1 MILLION
United Nations agencies in Sri Lanka are stepping up efforts in cooperation with the government to help the more than one million people affected by the severe floods that have struck the South Asian nation in recent weeks. Some 367,000 people were displaced into 633 temporary relocation centers in 12 districts and there have been 27 deaths, 12 missing persons and 47 injured people, but these numbers were likely to increase. WFP had so far distributed emergency rations to 170,000 people and was looking to initially cover about 420,000 people with emergency food rations.
$84 MILLION
The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, allocated some $84 million to boost the humanitarian response in 15 neglected emergencies around the world on January 13. The Central Emergency Response Fund was funded by voluntary contributions from member states, non-governmental organizations, local authorities, the private sector as well as individuals. |
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