24-26 May 2011, Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia. UNITAR and the Asia-Pacific Civil Military Centre of Excellence (APCMCOE) have identified the Protection of Civilians as an area of common interest on which they could jointly launch a sustainable cooperation.

Nairobi, Keynia.

20 May 2011, Geneva, Switzerland. UNITAR Executive Director Carlos Lopes and the Director-General of CERN, Rolf Heuer signed a framework cooperation agreement enhancing the long standing collaboration already existing between the two institutions in view of new challenges among which that of providing better connections between the scientific and the international communities.

UNOSAT has been setting standards in satellite analysis for humanitarian response since 2003. This accomplishment and the continuous research and development work done by UNOSAT Team to keep the humanitarian community at the edge of geographic information as a substantial decision support tool have been recognised on many occasions ranging from the Esri Award for excellence in GIS, to the UN Secretary-General’s UN21 Award for outstanding service.

22-23 June 2011, Reims, France.

20 June to 15 July 2011 - web-based - Climate Change has been at the top of the international agenda for some time now and the magnitude of the issue needs to be understood, specifically regarding the correlation between trade and environment. This sparks the debate about their relationship in terms of agreements and measures to mitigate climate change effects.

6 and 10 June 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  UNITAR Executive Director, Carlos Lopes, visiting Singapore and Malaysia next week for a series of high-level meetings, was invited to deliver public lectures on challenges to multilateralism by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) on 6 June and Malaysian Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations on 10 June.

May 2011, Geneva, Switzerland - The authorities of some of the Colombian departments affected by recent floods reported that this year’s flooding is worse than last year’s, with a death toll likely to rise above 500 while as many are still unaccounted for. Last year more than 2 million Colombians were affected by the floods according to figures released by OCHA.

19 May - Bern, Switzerland - Invited as a guest lecturer on the occasion of the 9th meeting of the Advisory Group on Environmental Emergencies, UNITAR Executive Director, Carlos Lopes, addressed the issue of environmental disaster response an

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) - which is the main forum for coordination, policy development and decision-making between key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners -  and UNITAR’s Public Finance and Trade Programme successfully launched the new e-Learning course on information management in humanitarian crises on 26 April 2011.