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With rap music and pinwheels, marches and solemn statements, numerous organizations across the planet will mark the third World Day Against Child Labour on 12 June this year with a specific focus on efforts to spare young people from working as domestics, the United Nations Labour Organization (ILO) has announced.

Thirty-five countries now face serious food shortages, including two dozen in Africa, according to a report released today by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Thousands of people along the Haitian-Dominican border lacking drinking water and food need urgent aid after raging floods left nearly 2,000 people dead or missing, destroyed crops, decimated livestock, and cut off roads and electricity, according to a United Nations relief assessment released today.

With tobacco use claiming one life every 6.5 seconds and causing an estimated annual economic loss of $200 billion worldwide, the United Nations health agency is devoting this year’s World No Tobacco Day to the “vicious circle” that inextricably links tobacco and poverty.

United Nations peacekeeping patrols in Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) eastern area, have been reinforced with units drawn from Goma and Kindu as battles rock the city centre for the third day running, the UN mission said today.

Gravely concerned at the scale of suffering caused by Israel's systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, water sources and livelihoods in the Rafah refugee camp, two United Nations experts today jointly condemned the practice as illegal and called for international action if it continues.

The United Nations refugee agency got the first indication of how the rainy season could block the transfer of thousands of Sudanese refugees from the insecure Chadian border when two of its teams had to stop driving their vehicles for safety's sake after downpours lasting less than an hour.

With a peacekeeping mission in Haiti set to begin next week, another for Burundi recently approved and one in the works for Sudan, the United Nations observed the International Day of UN Peacekeepers today at time of increased demands on its ability to maintain peace around the world.

More than 300 Liberian refugees who were stranded at sea during attempts to repatriate have arrived in Monrovia aboard a plane chartered by the United Nations and a partner agency.

United Nations Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi respects the decision taken by the Iraqi Governing Council to name Iyad Allawi as Iraq's Prime Minister-designate, a spokesman for the world body said today in response to press questions.