UN unveils its agenda for 2011‎

Today, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out the United Nations agenda for the coming year, the UN News Center reports. The agenda embraces a vast field of humanitarian activity from promoting sustainable development and mitigating climate change to empowering women to keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

“Success in rising to the challenge does not belong to any one of us,” he told the 192-member General Assembly, listing eight priorities for 2011.

“It depends on all of us, together. You were crucial to generating the progress that we have achieved in recent years. And your continued engagement, initiative and leadership are essential as we take on this ambitious agenda.”

Speaking at a news conference after the meeting, he cautioned: “If 2010 was a challenging year for the United Nations, 2011 will be even more so.”

Mr. Ban listed as the first goal action on inclusive and sustainable development in the face of a global recession that is still being felt in every corner of the world. Turning to climate change, he noted advances made at a meeting in Cancún, Mexico, last month on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, forest protection, climate finance, adaptation and technology. On the third strategic priority – empowering women – he pledged to promote full participation and gender equality, combat violence against women and increase their number in senior UN leadership posts. Focusing on promoting a safer and more secure world was quoted as the fourth UN priority. The fifth and sixth priorities concern advancing human rights and improving the response to major humanitarian crises by learning lessons from the devastating Haitian earthquake and the Pakistani floods of 2010. Maintaining the momentum achieved in disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation constitutes the seventh priority following last year’s review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the new nuclear arms reduction treaty between Russia and the United States.

Finally, the Secretary-General pledged to strengthen the UN from within by building a more modern, flexible Organization, better able to meet the challenges of the 21st century. “All of us will benefit from a United Nations that is ever more transparent, more accountable, more efficient, effective, and mobile,” he said.

“As I have often said, in today’s complicated and complex world, progress does not always come overnight. It comes in steps – some may be bigger than others. But the key is to keep moving forward – with unrelenting determination, with dogged diplomacy. You can count on me. There is no doubt that the world needs an ever stronger UN.”