Good afternoon everyone. I just ended some talks and discussions with His Excellency the Foreign Minister (Walid) Muallem and his team. The purpose was to discuss the preparation of the Geneva talks. The Geneva talks which we are planning to start, as you know, on the 13th of April, upon my return…

Staffan de Mistura (SdM): The main reason for meeting you today is actually to give you a little bit the overall scenario in what direction we are going, because you have the right to know how this will proceed and what is happening. Since you have been so much involved already in the past, let me…

Jan Egeland (JE): We had our eighth meeting of the Task Force on Humanitarian Access. We have been working for nearly two months and April was supposed to be our best month. It’s not looking so. So far I am disappointed and disheartened at what we achieved over the last week. We have a new…

It is a pleasure to welcome you all to the Geneva Conference on ‘Preventing Violent Extremism – The Way Forward’. I sincerely thank our co-host, the Swiss Government, for its support and cooperation in making this important event happen. As we have witnessed terrorist attacks in Belgium, Cote d’…

Ma Zhaoxu, the new Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented his credentials to Michael Møller, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva. Between 2013 and 2016, Mr. Ma served as the Ambassador of China to Australia, and from 2011 to…

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Refugee Agency, and the International Organization for Migration. UN…

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Mine Action Service, the World Trade Organization, and the World Health…

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities today concluded the examination of the initial report of Chile on its implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Presenting the report, Heidi Berner Herrera, Under-Secretary for Social…

JE: Thank you very much, we just finished a meeting with the ISSG task force on humanitarian access to Syria, we reviewed and compared progress this year compared to last year. 2015 did, in the first three months give us access to only one besieged area that was Yarmouk at the time. All the other…

The Human Rights Committee today concluded its one hundred and sixteenth session after adopting concluding observations on the reports of South Africa, Namibia, Sweden, New Zealand, Slovenia, Costa Rica and Rwanda. The concluding observations and recommendations on the seven country reports…