UN Calendar |
January 24
The first 2011 regular session of the executive board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) begins at UN headquarters in New York and will run through January 26.
A three-day workshop, organized by UN counter-terrorism experts, on countering the appeal of terrorism on the Internet, begins in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
January 25
The Secretary-General is in Geneva where he will address the Human Rights Council, the Conference on Disarmament and meet with the International Olympic Committee.
The Security Council hears a briefing on piracy in Somalia.
Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN WOMEN), launches UN Women's 100 Day Action Plan.
January 26
The Secretary-General meets with the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders in Geneva.
The Security Council hears a briefing and hold consultations on the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).
A United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) international symposium on the status of press freedom worldwide, freedom of expression on the internet and the safety of journalists is held in Paris.
January 27
International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
Ambassador Roger Meece, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, speaks at a Woodrow Wilson Center event titled, Elections and Peace Consolidation: Prospects and Challenges in the DRC in Washington.
The Secretary-General is in Davos, Switzerland, to take part in the World Economic Forum.
A United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference on "Journalism ethics and self-regulation in Europe: New media, old dilemmas" is held in Paris.
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Security Council's January Calendar
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New UN Reports
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For a complete listing of reports, please visit:
UN Reports
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January 15, 2011 - Ballots from the Southern Sudan referendum are sorted and counted in the presence of election observers at a polling center inside the Salva Kiir School in Aweil, Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, South Sudan, following a seven-day voting period. The referendum determines whether the South will secede to form an independent nation. UN Photo/Paul Banks
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Security Council welcomes 'peaceful' end of voting in South Sudan's referendum
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January 18, 2011 - A view of listeners at the Security Council's meeting on the Sudan, as Haile Menkerios, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the country (on screen), delivers a briefing to the Council via video link. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
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The Security Council welcomed the conclusion of voting in the referendum for the self-determination of Southern Sudan, describing the voting exercise as "largely peaceful and orderly" while urging both parties to Sudan's peace agreement to respect the outcome of the poll.
The week-long referendum, which ended on January 15, is part of the process to implement the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended two decades of civil war between the north and the south. Sixty percent of the nearly four million voters registered to take part in the referendum needed to vote for the outcome to be valid, with results expected in early February.
According to the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, 83 percent of the 3.76 million voters registered in the South had voted as of January 14.
In its statement, the Council commended the leadership shown by the parties to the CPA, as well as the work of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) and the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau, and congratulated the support provided by UNMIS throughout the referendum. It added that it looked forward to the SSRC's announcement of the referendum's results.
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UN in Washington
The United Nations is making progress in its efforts to incorporate women into its conflict mediation activities - but much more still needs to be done. That was one of the key messages the head of the UN Department of Political Affairs, Under-Secretary-General B. Lynn Pascoe, said on Tuesday to the Annual Policy Forum of the Institute for Inclusive Security in Washington, D.C. "We are working on it, but we are not as good as we need to be we need women's talent in a mediation role and we need strong involvement of women from all the conflicting parties," Mr. Pascoe said. "Only then, can we be sure that we are paying appropriate attention to the gender dimensions of conflict and assembling our best talent to resolve the conflict and keep it from re-emerging." Read more
Next week, Ambassador Roger Meece, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, speaks at a Woodrow Wilson Center event titled, Elections and Peace Consolidation: Prospects and Challenges in the DRC on Thursday, January 27 in Washington.
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Côte d'Ivoire: UN reinforces peacekeepers as officials warn of risks of genocide
The United Nations has reinforced its nearly 9,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Côte d'Ivoire with extra peacekeepers and helicopters, as senior officials called for urgent action to prevent growing post-electoral violence from degenerating into genocide.
 In a unanimous resolution adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for the use of force, the Security Council authorized the immediate deployment of an additional 2,000 troops and three armed helicopters in the West African country, where former president Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down despite the internationally recognized victory of opposition leader Alassane Ouattara in November's run-off elections.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Representative and head of the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI), Y. J. Choi, has said the reinforcements will provide a "rapid reaction capability" essential for the protection of civilians both in Abidjan, where Gbagbo loyalists have launched attacks, and in the country's west, which has seen an outburst of ethnic fighting.
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Record-setting 2010 highlights global warming trend, says UN weather agency
The year 2010 ranked as the warmest on record - together with 2005 and 1998 - according to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which added that last year also witnessed a large number of extreme weather events, including the heat wave in Russia and the devastating floods in Pakistan.
 In 2010, the global average temperature was 0.95 degrees Fahrenheit above the mean for the period from 1961 to 1990, the reference period for the Geneva-based WMO.
In addition, Arctic sea-ice cover in December 2010 was the lowest on record, with an average monthly extent of 12 million square kilometers, 1.35 million square kilometers below the 1979-2000 average for December. "The 2010 data confirm the Earth's significant long-term warming trend," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. "The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998."
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Somalia: Funds running short for government, UN-backed African peacekeepers
Soldiers from Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the African Union peacekeeping mission that is trying to stabilize the conflict-wracked country need urgent funding to continue their operations, a senior United Nations envoy warned on January 20.  "I should take this opportunity to inform that the [UN] Trust Fund for paying both AMISOM and TFG soldiers is at its lowest," UN Special Representative for Somalia Augustine Mahiga told a meeting of the Joint Security Committee of Somali officials and interested partners in neighboring Djibouti, referring to the AU mission by its acronym.
Mr. Mahiga made a similar plea in his briefing to the Security Council last week when he called for international financial and other support to help the UN-backed AMISOM regain full control of Mogadishu, the embattled capital, from Al-Shabaab and other Islamist groups. The Council has already authorized a 50 percent increase in AMISOM's strength from 8,000 to 12,000 troops.
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Week in Pictures
UN Mission in Sudan Patrols Abyei Area in Wake of Clashes
 January 15, 2011 - Peacekeepers with the UN Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) are pictured during a patrol in Sudan's Abyei region. The Mission has intensified its patrols in this area in the wake of violent clashes that have killed dozens before and during Southern Sudan's referendum on self-determination. Abyei was meant to have its own referendum on whether to join the southern or northern part of Sudan but disputes over who is eligible to vote among other issues have left the referendum indefinitely postponed. UN Photo/Tim McKulka _______________________________
Secretary-General Meets Sultan of Oman
January 19, 2011 - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) meets with Sultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman in Oman's capital, Muscat. UN Photo/Evan Schneider
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Week in Numbers
$169
Rising opium prices may encourage farmers in Afghanistan to plant more of the narcotic crop, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in the newly-released 2010 Afghanistan Opium Survey, warning that the higher prices could reverse recent gains in the fight against drug production in the Asian country. Poppy-growing households have seen a cash windfall. In 2010, the average farm-gate price of dry opium at harvest time was $169 per kilogram - a 164 per cent increase over 2009, when the price was $64 per kilo. Read more
$51 MILLION
With humanitarian organizations in Sri Lanka warning that their resources to respond to the flood crisis there are exhausted, the United Nations and its partners are seeking $51 million to help more than one million people get through the next six months. In eastern and central Sri Lanka, the flooding - which reached an almost 100 year high - has driven more than 360,000 people from their homes, killed 43 people, and totally destroyed some 6,000 homes and another 23,000 partially. Read more
27,000
United Nations deminers have removed more than 27,000 landmines from the buffer zone in Cyprus over the past six years, the UN envoy to the country said, while announcing that the mine action program will come to an end next month due to lack of access to remaining minefields. A total of 74 minefields or 9.7 square kilometers of land have been cleared throughout the buffer zone. The cleared area can now be farmed or put to other productive use. Read more
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