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While Governments around the world have been working decidedly and collectively to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and nuclear weapons, the international community must intensify efforts in that regard in order to keep up with and effectively address global challenges, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Progress on the economy and improving security is imperative so that Afghans have confidence in their Government, the United Nations envoy in Afghanistan said today.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released its 2015 annual report, articulating its response to the humanitarian challenges and human suffering, in all corners of the world that have overstretched the UN relief arm.

More than 240,000 people, or a third of the population, in Niger's Diffa region have now been uprooted from their homes since violence by Boko Haram insurgents began three years ago, a senior United Nations official said today.

With the conflict in Syria now well into its fifth year, and the country dealing with a grinding crisis that has brought death, displacement and regional instability, the international community must not lose momentum in attaining a comprehensive and concrete political solution, senior United Nations officials emphasized today.

The United Nations–supported Yemeni peace talks under way in Kuwait have progressed “slowly, yet constructively,” over the last two months, with agreement still to be reached on the sequencing of the various steps proposed, including the timing of establishing a national unity government, the UN envoy for the country said today.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) today sentenced the former Congolese Vice-President, Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, to 18 years of imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Central African Republic between October 2002 and March 2003.

A senior United Nations expert on human rights in Belarus warned today that several generations have grown up in the country “with no experience of what the words ‘pluralism,’ ‘labour rights,’ ‘free enterprise,’ ‘free artistic creation’ or ‘free media’ mean in reality.”

Amid ongoing fighting in the embattled Iraqi city of Fallujah, the United Nations human rights office today warned of continuing allegations of serious rights violations, as the Organization’s refugee agency reported a funding crunch to meet the immediate needs of the thousands of civilians who continue to flee the area.

Concerned at the intensification of a crackdown on free expression and association, and the right to a nationality in Bahrain, the United Nations human rights office today urged the Government to ensure those rights are protected in line with the country’s obligations under international law and that civil society activists do not face undue pressure, intimidation or reprisals for their work.