Europe

Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen from the media, it’s a great pleasure to be back in Vienna, this time as the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
 
Tomorrow will be a very important day in which Austria will be celebrating the day in which it regained its full independence and sovereignty.
 

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Thank you very much. It is the third time that I have the pleasure to address the media, so obviously I want essentially to express again my very deep appreciation for the Austrian hospitality and for the fantastic cooperation that Austria provides to all our agencies here in Vienna.
 
At the same time, I have been receiving information about the situation in Gaza, where, according to the last information I have, there is already a number of people killed -- about 30 to 40 -- and probably more than 1,500 injured.
 

It is a great pleasure to be here in Vienna for the first time as Secretary-General.  

I thank the United Nations staff based here, the representatives of Member States, civil society and all our partners, for your work on some of the most challenging problems the international community faces today:  transnational crime, human trafficking, corruption, drug policy, cybercrime.  

I am very pleased and very honoured to be with all of you today. 

I thank the government of Austria and the R20 for promoting the low-carbon infrastructure we need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to implement the Paris Agreement and with enhanced ambition as the targets that were fixed in Paris, we all know, will not be enough. We need to have an increased ambition in that implementation.

This is a matter of the utmost priority. 

I want to express my deep gratitude to the Swedish Government for having organized this event.
 
I believe it is highly symbolic that the Security Council meets in Dag Hammarskjöld’s house. He said, I believe in 1956 or 1957, that more than ever, the world is one world.
 
And when we look at what is happening today, when we see so many divides, old divides coming back, new divides multiplying, conflicts that are causing enormous suffering all over the world, Syria the most tragic example of them all: it is the moment to remember those words of Dag Hammarskjöld.

Thank you very much Prime Minister.  

I want to express my deep gratitude to the Swedish Government for the wonderful hospitality the Security Council enjoyed and for the wonderful hospitality I myself enjoyed in Uppsala and here in Stockholm.  

Ladies and gentlemen from the media, thank you very much for your presence.  It is my pleasure to announce that this Pledging Conference represents a remarkable success of international solidarity to the people of Yemen.  The pledges announced represent more than $ 2 billion and if you compare with last year’s Pledging Conference, we reached $ 1.1 billion.  So practically, we have doubled the international commitment to Yemen from 2017 to 2018. 

Thank you for coming together in support of the people and institutions of Lebanon.
 
Allow me to begin by recalling my close ties with Lebanon and the circumstances surrounding the establishment of this International Support Group.
 
The need for such a partnership emerged during my years as High Commissioner for Refugees.
 
As the dramatic impacts of the Syrian conflict spread well beyond its borders, I saw first-hand the outstanding hospitality the Lebanese people extended to Syrians fleeing violence and destruction.