U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to leaders gathered in Osaka, Japan, for the two-day summit beginning Friday that while the world has made progress fixing some big problems it's not happening fast enough or shared by all countries.
In a sign of how dire the financial situation of the UN is, Guterres said this week he had contemplated selling his official four-story residence in New York when he took charge as the world organisation's head to help resolve the deteriorating financial crisis facing the United Nations.
The Secretary General’s official residence is in Sutton Place, an exclusive Manhattan enclave off the East River.
The UN chief also said he has been offering his "good offices in relation to the dialogue between the two countries that, until now, had no conditions of success."
The UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact Task Force will replace the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force, which was established in 2005 to strengthen UN system-wide coordination and coherence of counter-terrorism efforts.
Modi, a strong advocate of climate change had met Guterres last week on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina where both the leaders held discussions about climate change and India’s support for the Paris Climate Agreement.
Modi tweeted that he had an excellent meeting with the Secretary General and that there were wide-ranging deliberations on various global issues.
PM Modi and French President Macron were jointly awarded the UN's highest environmental honour for their pioneering work.
According to the UN estimates, nearly 700,000 minority Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state since August 25 last year when the army launched a military crackdown.
The UN chief will be on a visit to India from October 1 to 3 and is scheduled to meet President Kovind, PM Narendra Modi and EAM Sushma Swaraj.
Guterres, who will begin a three-day visit to India on Monday, said the planning and implementation of acts of terrorism transcend borders and it is the responsibility of all the States to take action to address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism.
UN peacekeeping missions are facing allegations of sexual abuse in African countries. In 2017, Guterres had launched a campaign to prevent and end sexual exploitation by UN personnel.
The Secretary-General will arrive in New Delhi on October 1.
The world body's annual high-level segment – formally known as the 'General Debate' – begins on September 25, where every country's leader gets to address the world.
The UN extended its full support for the Japanese initiative of dialogue with North Korea. In June, US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held a historic summit in Singapore, signing a joint statement which included a pledge to end Democratic People Republic Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
The UN Secretary-General’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that in principle good offices of the UN chief are always available for mediation, but everyone needs to agree on involving the world body.
The U.N. chief says that the United Nations is investigating Iran's possible transfer of ballistic missiles to Houthi Shiite rebels in Yemen that may have been used in launches aimed at Saudi Arabia.
"The United Nations continued to receive reports of the recruitment and use of children by armed groups, including the Naxalites, in particular in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand," Antonio Guterres said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that India ranked third among the countries that have faced the most natural disasters in the last half century.
Guterres' spokesperson Stephane Dujarric's remarks came when he was asked if the Secretary-General is paying attention to the situation in the region
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