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With Afghanistan's opium production having jumped last year 22 per cent to $3 billion in value and to 87 per cent of the world's illicit output, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will visit the Central Asian country this week to discuss ways of stopping the march towards an “opium economy.”

The top United Nations human rights official today called on the Nepalese Government and Maoist rebels to do more to tackle the grave human rights abuses that were taking place in the Himalayan kingdom.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has been ratified by almost every Member State, but with ecosystems being destroyed at rates never before seen, international and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector and individuals must play their part in ending destructive behaviours, according to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The United Nations envoy for Sudan is continuing preparations for the deployment of a UN peace support mission in the south of the vast country to consolidate the recently signed peace agreement between the Government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

The United Nations special envoy for Iraq Ashraf Qazi has been holding intensive meetings with Iraqi leaders to identify specific mechanisms to improve the security and political environments in which Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission will hold elections next Sunday, the UN mission in Baghdad said today.

As the relief effort for the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster moves into its fifth week, United Nations agencies are producing topographical satellite maps to aid rehabilitation while raising the alarm for extra vigilance to avoid the further spread of AIDS through people forced into the sex trade because they have lost their other means of livelihood.

A four-member United Nations team has been sent to Guyana to assess the needs of thousands of people who have been forced out of their homes in the flooded capital and coastal villages of the South American country, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

The murders of the governor of Bubanza province and his bodyguard were deplorable, the top United Nations envoy for Burundi said today.

The drive to bring safe water and sanitation to youngsters in the tsunami-affected Indian Ocean area has highlighted the need for these basics in schools around the world to improve the health and education of millions of schoolchildren, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today.

The financial system that started off decades ago as just small loans to the poor has expanded into such diverse small-scale services for its clients as providing credit cards, setting up saving programmes that identify illiterate clients by a fingerprint and having audited financial standards for microfinance institutions, a World Bank executive said.