Latest News

After a period of brutal violence and economic collapse in Mali, access was now stable enough so that aid, if adequately funded, could help hundreds of thousands rebuild their lives, a top United Nations humanitarian official said today after a visit to the West African country.

A senior official with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today warned of the enormous humanitarian impact of the ongoing Syria crisis, particularly on civilians who have been displaced and face threats such as gender-based violence.

Current biofuel certification schemes are making it difficult for smallholder farmers to participate in export markets, according to a new report released today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which advocates for a change in the way these schemes are currently managed.

Supermodel and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Gisele Bündchen is joining former United States Vice President Al Gore to urge support for the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s initiative to achieve universal access to modern energy services by 2030.

Mediating, strengthening governance and creating jobs were some of the United Nations objectives highlighted today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to ensure that people living in conflict areas or in countries emerging from conflict are not forgotten from future development agendas.

Cocaine trafficking, the smuggling of migrants, and the trafficking of fraudulent pharmaceuticals are among the numerous damaging illegal activities perpetrated by transnational organized crime syndicates which continue to fuel instability across West Africa, a new United Nations report released today has warned.

Governments, farmer organizations and rural families must all be involved to eliminate child labour in the livestock sector, which is a widespread and largely ignored practice, according to a United Nations report released today.

A group of United Nations independent experts back from Honduras today urged that Government to tighten oversight of the increasing number of private security companies, as well as to strengthen the judicial system to properly investigate and prosecute potential human rights violations stemming from land-rights disputes.

As the main United Nations human rights body began its work today, senior UN officials stressed the importance of strengthening international processes that will monitor and prevent rights violations around the world as well as hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today reiterated his call for a global moratorium on applying the death penalty, stressing the United Nations’ long history of opposing the practice and the growing momentum among the international community to permanently end it.