General News

Two peacekeepers serving with the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID) were freed on Wednesday after four and a half months in captivity.

The police personnel, Hasan Al-Mazawdeh and Qasim Al-Sarhan of Jordan were abducted on 20 August last year while on patrol in the town of Kabkabiya in North Darfur.

UNAMID has thanked the governments of Sudan and Jordan for their assistance in the safe release of the peacekeepers.

Conflict-related sexual violence persists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where thousands of people were displaced around the city of Goma as a result of the latest attacks by the rebel group M23.

Survival of the displaced people presents its many challenges, particularly for the women. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) received reports of dozens of attacks and rapes as we hear in this report by UNHCR’s Edith Champagne.

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Strict measures implemented in the Spanish region of Catalonia between 2000 and 2010 helped to reduce the number of people killed in road accidents by over 50 per cent.

That’s according to a study published this month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

The study says the measures not only save people’s lives but also make substantial savings that translate into economic benefits for society as a whole.

Sixty thousand people have been killed in Syria between 15 March 2011 and 30 November 2012. That’s according to data specialists who carried out an in-depth analysis on behalf of the UN Human Rights Office.

Rupert Colville, the spokesperson for the UN Human rights office says the list included four elements – the first and last names of the victims, the date and the location of the death. If any of the elements were missing, the victim’s names were not included.