Asia Pacific

Children under age five are the most vulnerable

Pakistan: UN study recommends steps to fight child malnutrition among quake survivors

10 May 2006
Seven months after the earthquake that devastated Pakistan in October, malnutrition persists as one of the major problems for children under the age of five in the affected areas, but the situation is gradually improving, thanks in part to an ambitious United Nations-backed survey of survivors.
South sea island coconuts

UN agency helps tiny Tuvalu fight its rat pack problem

8 May 2006
With recycled Australian pineapple cans containing an environmentally friendly pesticide, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is helping the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu (nine coral islands, population 9,000) to fight an infestation of rats that threaten the country’s chief export crop - coconuts.
Child receiving polio vaccine

Afghanistan: UN-backed polio campaign underway targets more than 2 million children

8 May 2006
More than 2 million Afghan children are currently being immunized in a United Nations-backed three-day polio eradication drive following a sixth reported case of the crippling and sometimes fatal disease in the south of the country this year.
Tom Koenigs on recent visit to Pul-i-Charkhi prison

UN plays key role in Afghan prison reform; Pul-i-Charkhi seen as model

8 May 2006
Afghanistan’s Pul-i-Charkhi prison, once described by a newspaper as a “kind of Buchenwald,” has become a model for prison reform in the war-torn country, said officials of the United Nations, which is taking a lead role in the difficult task of improving the detention and legal system countrywide.

Secretary-General to begin two-weeks of visits: first to Austria and then to Asia

8 May 2006
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will begin more than two weeks of official visits on Wednesday, traveling first to Austria and then starting a tour of Asia that will take in the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, Viet Nam and finally Thailand, a UN spokesman announced today.
Anwarul Chowdhury

UN envoy calls for 'litre of water per day' for people in world's poorest countries

6 May 2006
The United Nations envoy for the most vulnerable countries has called for a global campaign to bring safe drinking water to the millions of people living in the world's most impoverished States.
Returnee family in severely damaged village of Ghannol

100,000 Pakistani quake survivors leave camps for home, UN reports

5 May 2006
Some 100,000 survivors of last October’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan have left temporary camps and returned to their ruined towns, villages and properties over the past month as the emergency phase of the massive relief operation begins to wind down, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) reported today.
Sukehiro Hasegawa briefs the Council

Timor Leste: 5 dead in recent riots, UN official tells Council, urging that UN stay

5 May 2006
The senior United Nations envoy to Timor-Leste today reported to the Security Council that five people died and 60 were injured during recent clashes in the nascent country, and urged an extension of the world body’s presence there.

UNICEF launches new clean water project for Pakistani quake victims

4 May 2006
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today launched a new water network to benefit up to 30,000 people in a region of Pakistan devastated by last October’s earthquake.
Koïchiro Matsuura

Two more journalists killed as UNESCO presents press freedom prize

4 May 2006
Even as he presented an award to a Lebanese journalist who lost a hand and a leg in an attempted car bomb assassination, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had to deplore the murder of two more media professionals on the eve of the ceremony and in the very country hosting it.