Security Council members have strongly condemned the recent attacks against embassies and consular premises in Syria and urged the country's authorities to meet their international obligations to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel.

November 15, 2011, United Nations, New York - José Filipe Moraes Cabral, Permanent Representative of Portugal to the UN and President of the Security Council for November, reads a statement to the press on behalf of the Council condemning in the strongest terms recent attacks on several embassies and consular premises in Syria. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

The attacks follow the decision of the League of Arab States to suspend Syria's membership until authorities end their continued crackdown on anti-government protesters. More than 3,500 people have died since an uprising, in line with similar protests in other countries across North Africa and the Middle East, began early this year.

In a press statement issued on November 15, the 15-member Council condemned the attacks, noting they resulted in intrusions into diplomatic premises.

The Council "recalled the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and the obligations on host governments, including under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage and prevent any disturbance of the peace of these missions or impairment of their dignity," the statement said.

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The United Nations tribunal trying those most responsible for the 1994 genocide that engulfed Rwanda has found a former mayor guilty of genocide and extermination and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

In its verdict on November 17, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) ruled that Grégoire Ndahimana, the former mayor of Kivumu commune in Kibuye prefecture, committed the crime of extermination by "aiding and abetting as well as by virtue of his command responsibility over communal police in Kivumu." A count of complicity to genocide was dismissed.

The tribunal, which is based in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha, ordered that its sentence against Mr. Ndahimana supersede any other imposed on the accused by any other state or institution, and that he receives credit for time served since his arrest on August 11, 2009.

The majority of the trial chamber's three-judge panel found, as a mitigating factor, that the scale of the operation that led to the destruction of a church and the killing of thousands of ethnic Tutsi civilians, reflected broad coordination among various groups, local religious authorities, as well as civilian assailants.

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged business leaders in the Asia and Pacific region to support the United Nations-led global effort to improve the health of women and children to create healthier communities across the world.

"When mothers are healthy, children are healthy," said Mr. Ban, addressing the Business Summit of private sector leaders from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on November 18 in Bali, Indonesia.

"When children and mothers are healthy, then communities and nations cannot but be healthy. Then whole world will be healthy. I really count on the leadership of ASEAN business leaders."

He briefed them on the Every Woman Every Child, a global effort launched last year to mobilize and intensify global action to save the lives of 16 million women and children and improve the lives of millions more.

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