Latest News

Environmentally-insensitive trade liberalization can lead to economically costly soil degradation, water pollution, loss of biodiversity and destruction of forests, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) warned today.

Steadfast in its determination to end interference in the domestic affairs of Lebanon, a group of interested countries met yesterday at the United Nations to support the democratic reform process in the country, following the assassination of a former prime minister, the withdrawal of Syrian troops and elections.

The first of more than 1,500 Chadian refugees who have spent the past two decades in exile in the Central African Republic (CAR) after fleeing civil war in their country are scheduled to return home today in an operation expected to be completed by early October, the United Nations refugee agency reported.

Nearly half of the children of Angola are severely malnourished and a high percentage of them in the heavily land-mined central highlands are stunted, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said, as it appealed for funds to feed 700,000 people in a country emerging from 27 years of civil war.

The United Nations Secretariat building in New York regained full power today, after a 4,000 amp fuse blew at around noon yesterday in the 52-year old landmark Headquarters building, causing a partial power outage and disrupting phone and computer services.

With efforts to prevent nuclear weapons and radioactive materials from falling into terrorist hands a top priority, the United Nations atomic watchdog has called for a series of steps ranging from a reliable flow of funding to better insight into illicit trafficking to ratification of an international treaty to protect nuclear materials.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is to build more than 350 permanent new schools at a cost of $90 million in the regions of Indonesia devastated by the tsunami last year.

Developing global standards to minimize the risk of chemicals that kill and sicken thousands every year and seriously damage the environment tops the agenda in a United Nations-backed meeting of government leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other stakeholders in Vienna this week.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura has been elected for a second term to head an agency whose wide mandate ranges from safeguarding the world’s cultural and archaeological heritage to stimulating scientific exchanges to protecting journalists in the pursuit of their jobs.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today mourned the death of Nazi war criminal hunter Simon Wiesenthal, citing his significant contributions to the UN’s own fight to promote tolerance and fight anti-Semitism.