CLIMATE CHANGE
This morning, the Secretary-General opened the Climate Action Summit by telling world leaders that the warming earth is issuing a chilling cry to stop. If we don’t urgently change our ways of life, we jeopardize life itself, he said.
The Secretary-General stressed that while we are losing climate emergency race, it is still a race we can win. He emphasized that the solutions to this crisis must come from us and will require fundamental transformations in all aspects of society: how we grow food, use land, fuel our transport and power our economies. This will have a cost but the greatest cost is doing nothing he said. We added that we need to link climate change to a new model of development – one with less suffering, a fair globalization and harmony between people and nature.
The Secretary-General also held a dialogue with three youth climate activists: Paloma Costa Oliveira, Anurag Saha Roy and Greta Thunberg, and asked world leaders to not just listen to them but support youth-led initiatives to tackle climate change.
Earlier today, the Secretary-General also spoke at the Rainforest Alliance event and said we will not overcome the climate emergency without safeguarding our planet’s very lungs.
On Sunday, the United Nations Secretariat adopted a new 10-year Climate Action Plan aimed at transforming its operations to achieve a 45 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and sourcing 80 per cent of electricity from renewable energy by 2030.  The Plan was adopted just ahead of today’s Climate Action Summit to help increase global ambition and vastly increase action to limit climate change. 
The new Climate Action Plan has been designed to transform UN Secretariat operations to align with the goals of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that found there were clear benefits to limiting climate change to 1.5 °C. The Plan also commits the Organization to ongoing climate neutrality for its global operations.
 
SYRIA
The Secretary-General has announced the agreement of the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Negotiations Commission for a credible, balanced and inclusive Constitutional Committee that will be facilitated by the United Nations in Geneva. The Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, facilitated the agreement in accordance with Security Council resolution 2254 (2015) and will convene the Constitutional Committee in the coming weeks.
The Secretary-General, in remarks to the press, said that he strongly believes that the launch of the Syrian-owned and Syrian-led Constitutional Committee can and must be the beginning of the political path out of the tragedy toward a solution in line with resolution 2254 (2015) that meets the legitimate aspirations of all Syrians and is based on a strong commitment to the country’s sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity. The Constitutional Committee’s launch and work must be accompanied by concrete actions to build trust and confidence as my Special Envoy discharges his mandate to facilitate a broader political process forward.
 
UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE
Today, world leaders adopted a high-level United Nations Political Declaration on Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the most comprehensive set of health commitments ever adopted at this level.
In his remarks during the high-level event this morning, the Secretary-General said that this Declaration “is a vision for Universal Health Coverage by 2030.”
He stressed that this is a significant achievement that will drive progress over the next decade on communicable diseases including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, while addressing non-communicable disease and antimicrobial resistance through robust and resilient primary healthcare systems.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that this declaration represents “a landmark for global health and development” as the world has 11 years left “to make good on its sustainable development goals. Universal health coverage is key to ensuring that happens.”
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) applauded the commitment of Member States to provide 1 billion more people with quality health services by 2023 and stressed the critical need to engage civil society and communities in every aspect of universal health coverage in order to leave no one behind.
According to a recent report by the WHO, countries must increase spending on primary healthcare by at least 1 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) if the world is to close glaring coverage gaps and meet health targets agreed in 2015.
The new report also wars that if current trends continue, up to 5 billion people will still be unable to access health care in 2030, the deadline world leaders have set for achieving universal health coverage.
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The Secretary-General spoke this morning at an event on religious freedom, stressing that it is totally unacceptable in the 21st century for people to face discrimination and intimidation for their beliefs and calling the persecution of religious minorities utterly intolerable.
He said that the best way to promote international religious freedom is by uniting our voices for good, countering messages of hate with messages of peace, embracing diversity and protecting human rights everywhere.
The Secretary-General noted that the United Nations is stepping up action through two new initiatives that he has launched in recent weeks: first, a strategy on hate speech to coordinate efforts across the UN system, addressing the root causes and making our response more effective against hate speech, and secondly, an action plan for the UN to be fully engaged in efforts to support safeguard religious sites and ensure the safety of houses of worship.