The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities today concluded its fifteenth session after adopting its concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Chile, Lithuania, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Thailand and Uganda on how they implement the provisions of the Convention on…

Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, the new Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented his letter of nomination to Michael Møller, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva. Prior to his appointment to Geneva, Mr. Jurkovic had been serving as…

Staffan de Mistura (SdM): I was away yesterday for personal family reasons, so my apologies if I could not be with you yesterday. But we all have a family, too, and sometimes we do have a coincidence of urgent family issues to address and I had to do so, so my apologies. Nothing political, no…

GENEVA (21 April 2016) – United Nations experts have called on Kyrgyzstan to immediately release jailed political activist and journalist Azimjan Askarov, after finding that he had been arbitrarily detained, held in inhumane conditions, tortured and mistreated, and prevented from adequately…

Rhéal LeBlanc, Chief, Press and External Relations Section, United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the…

Arabic Staffan de Mistura (SdM): Good evening, it has been an intense day so let me recap my points if I may. Let me make some comments and then it will take some questions because I think it is worth it having your questions and I would take exceptionally five questions, in view of the long day…

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i. of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons for the United Nations Refugee Agency, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, International Organization for Migration, United Nations Office for Disaster…

Transcript of the stakeout by the Special Envoy for Syria after the meeting of the Humanitarian Access Task Force Arabic version SdeM: Let me raise some points that have been raised so far in these meetings. I cannot deny that everyone in the meeting was disappointed; indeed many of them are…

Staffan de Mistura (SdeM): Since we have not seen each other for a while, I will try to be a little bit more extensive. I just returned actually today after a quite intensive visit to Moscow, Amman, Damascus, Teheran, and the main purpose was to sound the authorities in these capitals about their…

Michael Møller, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, and Ma Zhaoxu, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding whereby China will finance the full refurbishment…