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In an important step forward in developing human rights standards for corporations, an expert subsidiary panel of the top United Nations rights body today approved a set of ethics guidelines bringing together a range of legal obligations for companies drawn from existing human rights, labour and environmental standards.

With 74 million young people currently unemployed, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan marked International Youth Day today with a call for strategies to provide “decent and productive work” around the world and thus avoid “the tragedy of young lives misspent in crime, drug abuse, civil conflict and even terrorism.”

The United Nations mission in Kosovo is set to launch a month-long weapons amnesty in September, its third such effort to take out of circulation “the huge quantity of unauthorized weapons” left in the wake of the fighting between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

The top United Nations envoy in Iraq today warmly welcomed steps taken by the Iraqi Governing Council to draft a new constitution for the country and offered the world body's help.

Oscar®-award winning actress Jessica Lange, newly appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), has called on the international community to put an end to the widespread brutal rape of women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Marking the anniversary of the abduction in Dagestan, Russian Federation, of an international aid worker, the United Nations today reiterated its appeal for his immediate and safe release, stressing that such kidnappings hamper humanitarian efforts in the North Caucasus.

Hundreds of Kosovo Roma who had been camping near the border between the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece for nearly three months have now agreed to remain in the Republic, following negotiations including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Recent unrest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra has forced the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to interrupt in mid-journey its second repatriation of refugees from Saudi Arabia since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a spokesman for the agency said today.

Voicing deep concern over the escalation in violence, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today condemned the two suicide bombings in the Israeli town of Rosh Ha'ayin and outside the settlement of Ariel, and urged both Israelis and Palestinians to adhere to the Middle East peace plan and show restraint.

Declaring that President Charles Taylor's departure from power in Liberia was a "significant, but incomplete" step in West Africa's struggle for peace and stability, the prosecutor for a special war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone today called on the international community to ensure that the former Liberian leader stood trial for the charges against him.