Staffan de Mistura (SdeM): Good evening. Well, it is a good thing to recap. We had today three events, and you must have had already one debriefing on that. We had the Humanitarian Task Force. Jan Egeland debriefed you on that. And the perception we have is that the progress this time is being slow…

RER: Good afternoon. We had a useful meeting today. We discussed issues of substance as you will recall on Monday. The government of Syria delegation provided us with some ideas on the political process. We reacted to them, through seeking further clarifications. I think that the discussion…

GENEVA (Issued as received) – A Russian woman who was denied employment at the helm of a boat because the job was on a list of banned occupations for women in the Russian Federation suffered gender-based discrimination, UN experts have found. The experts, from the Committee on the Elimination of…

Michele Zaccheo, Chief, Radio and Television Section, United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Office for the…

SdeM: We had a late afternoon meeting today; it started around 5:00 o’clock and ended a few minutes ago. It was with the HNC, the High Negotiations Committee. The first moment of this meeting was dedicated to commemorating by standing, everyone in silence for a minute; we should have been standing…

The announcement by President Putin on the very day of the beginning of this round of Intra-Syrian Talks in Geneva is a significant development, which we hope will have a positive impact on the progress of the negotiations in Geneva aimed at achieving a political solution of the Syrian conflict and…

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY IN SYRIA Five years ago thousands of Syrians took to the streets calling for political change, only to be met with violence and repression. Recalling the origins of the conflict is important as we mark this grim anniversary. The destruction that engulfed Syria following…

SDeM: During the first meeting, which lasted about more than an hour together with the representation of the delegation of the government of the Syrian Republic, and led by ambassador Jafaari, we, as expected, went through various procedural issues that we wanted to clarify so we are all on the…

On 11 March 2016, Bahrain joined the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons, Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons and Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War. Bahrain is now the 122nd State Party to the CCW. Ambassador Tehmina Janjua of Pakistan…

Thank you. I will take two or three questions. The first thing I will like to say is, I would like, on behalf of the Secretary-General and of my own team, to express my own condolences and those of the United Nations for this horrific attack which took place in Ankara yesterday. It is the first…