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The international community must seize the opportunity to hold open, comprehensive and in-depth discussions on the world drug problem at next year’s General Assembly special session devoted to the issue, a senior United Nations official said today amid appeals for a clampdown on transnational drug trafficking networks and their criminal offshoots.

A report on agricultural commodity prices released today by the United Nations agricultural agency says that hefty supply levels mean rates will continue to decline despite pressure from a slight reduction in global harvests.

The top United Nations relief official for Yemen has voiced grave concern over reports that “scores” of civilians have been killed and injured amid ongoing fighting in the city of Aden, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Amid continuing relief efforts throughout Nepal, the threat of disease increasingly hangs over the earthquake-stricken nation as the country's water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure struggles to recover from the 7.8 magnitude tremor, an official with the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

The United Nations refugee agency today expressed its deep concern over the discovery of dozens of bodies in smugglers’ camps in Thailand, appealing for a regional effort to end human trafficking and protect those who escape difficult conditions from “the hands of ruthless smugglers.”

A new United Nations-backed report on the link between forests and food production and nutrition says that woodlands could be the key to ending hunger and will be intimately linked to the global fight against climate change.

As Liberia bounces back from the “national nightmare” of a devastating Ebola epidemic which claimed more than 4,000 lives, the country must also prepare for a series of future challenges – from the build-up of its security sector to the undertaking of critical presidential elections in 2017, according to Karin Landgren, the head of the United Nations Mission there (UNMIL).

By the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million people had been forced to flee their homes within their own country because of conflict or violence, prompting the United Nations refugee agency to appeal today for “an all-out effort to bring about peace in war-ravaged countries.”

The United Nations Special Envoy on Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is conducting intensive consultations aimed at getting the political process back on track for the country, where conflict erupted in late March.

As one of the oldest outdoor gifts at the United Nations, the Peace Bell represents the “collective desire for the world to live in peace,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today at a ceremony to reinstall the symbolic bell at its permanent home at Headquarters in New York.