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The humanitarian needs of people affected by January’s earthquake in Haiti remain immense, United Nations agencies and their partners said today in a report, which also takes stock of the response effort and presents lessons learned from the challenging and complex emergency.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council have strongly condemned the bombings that struck the Ugandan capital on Sunday, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds at two sites as they were watching the final match of the football World Cup.

Dozens of cities have signed on to a United Nations initiative to boost their resilience against natural hazards, which, according to a senior official with the world body, can accelerate progress towards achieving development targets.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the need to ensure accountability for those involved in the massacre of Muslim men and boys 15 years ago by Bosnian Serb forces after they took over Srebrenica, which was declared a safe haven by the Security Council.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will travel to the Spanish capital, Madrid, on Friday to attend the first meeting of the group set up to help spur action towards achieving the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has signed a cooperation agreement with two organisations in Lesotho under which it will allocate over $1.2 million to boost an integrated social protection system for orphans and other vulnerable children in the country.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the central role of civil society in the process aimed at bringing a lasting peace to Darfur, as over 400 representatives of the strife-torn Sudanese region’s different communities, opinion leaders, women, youth, intellectuals, displaced people and the diaspora gathered for talks in the Qatari capital, Doha.

A meeting of the United Nations committee on the elimination of discrimination against women opened in New York today to look into the situation of women in eight countries, including Papua New Guinea, which will be reviewed for the first time, and India, which will be examined on an exceptional basis.

Some crucial elements – including an oil-metering system – must still be implemented to allow Iraq to fully manage its own export revenues and funnel them towards development needs, a senior United Nations official told the Security Council today.

Twenty young Africans will get the chance of a lifetime to watch the final match of the soccer World Cup in South Africa today, thanks to a United Nations-backed scheme seeking to raise awareness of how young people can help to combat urban poverty.