A pattern of violations had emerged regarding Iran’s treatment of civil society actors — including political dissidents – that spoke to unfair trials and the targeting of human rights defenders, and the best strategy for substantially improving those conditions was not to penalize the Government, but rather engage it in dialogue that would evolve over time, said the United Nations special investigator on that country.
General Assembly: Press Conference
Ion Botnaru, Director of the General Assembly and Economic and Social Council Affairs Division, announced during a Headquarters news conference this afternoon the names of the nine countries vying for the soon-to-be-vacant five non-permanent seats on the Security Council. He also announced the names of candidates for upcoming elections to fill seats on the Economic and Social Council and the International Court of Justice.
There was no universal standard for the definition of long-term and other abusive forms of solitary confinement, but there was no doubt that it should be banned as torture, three human rights experts said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.
The General Assembly’s incoming President, in his first Headquarters press conference this afternoon, said the sixty-sixth session would focus on the priority theme of mediation.
In the past year, the General Assembly had made important contributions to the mobilization of support for the Millennium Development Goals, the green economy and sustainable development, as well as the role of the United Nations in global governance, Joseph Deiss (Switzerland), outgoing Assembly President, said at his final Headquarters press conference today.
While many Governments were actively pursuing reforms to dismantle legal barriers holding back women’s empowerment, millions of women still faced an uphill battle in the struggle to undo negative stereotypes, lock down property rights and successfully confront sexual harassment in the workplace, the Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women said today.
Condemning Friday’s bombing in Oslo and the shooting massacre at a Norwegian summer camp, delegates and youth advocates said today that this week’s General Assembly’s High-Level Meeting on Youth would aim to end such extremist behaviour and guide young people on a path of tolerance and understanding. “We are here to prevent what happened in Norway in the future,” Jean-Francis Zinsou (Benin), a co-facilitator of the Meeting, said at a Headquarters press conference.
Paul De Lay, Deputy Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) hailed the world body’s expected adoption later today of a comprehensive strategy charting the global response to the deadly virus, including a commitment to halving sexual transmission of HIV by 2015, and a broader pledge to work towards increasing funding to tackle HIV/AIDS to between $22 billion and $24 billion per year by that time.
World leaders attending this week’s General Assembly High-level Meeting on HIV/AIDS must make bold commitments to reach the shared goal of zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths, as the lives of all those living with or affected by the disease weighed in the balance, Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) said at a Headquarters press conference today.
General Assembly President Joseph Deiss (Switzerland) briefed the press at Headquarters today on a wide range of topics, covering his recent travels on behalf of the world body and highlighting his meetings with political groupings and Government officials on matters, such as Security Council reform, global governance and support for the least developed countries.