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United Nations human rights experts today welcomed Iran’s weekend release of four Iranian-Americans in an apparent prisoner swap with the United States, and called on Tehran to pave the way for the freeing of all remaining unlawfully detained prisoners.

Citing a “very serious situation with acute shortages of shelter” in south-east Niger where some 100,000 people have fled to escape Boko Haram violence, the United Nations refugee agency today appealed for urgent humanitarian assistance and funding to help those that have been uprooted.

Overnight aid deliveries reached the Syrian towns of Madaya, Zabadani, Kefraya and Foah, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which today announced it is planning on delivering more assistance.

With children now accounting for more than one in three of the tens of thousands of refugees and migrants flooding into Europe, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today voiced concern at the impact recent sub-zero temperatures and snowy conditions were having on them.

The head of the United Nations nuclear agency today called for long-term predictable funding to monitor Iran’s agreement with the international community to never seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

A United Nations report released today details the severe and extensive impact on civilians of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, with at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded between January 2014 and October 2015, while another 3.2 million people have been internally displaced due to violence.

Senior United Nations officials today welcomed the nomination of the Government of National Accord in Libya by the Presidency Council as a significant step forward in the quest to end the country's political divisions and armed conflict.

In September 2002, Zeid was elected the first President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. At that time, the Court was only a plan on paper, and over the next three years he oversaw the election of the first 18 judges, mediated selection of the Court’s first president, and led efforts to name the Court’s first prosecutor – laying out a functioning institution, despite considerable budgetary pressures and criticism of the Court from several leading nations.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the Government and all parties in Yemen as well as States in the region to commit to a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire to enable the rapid resumption of already delayed peace talks which the United Nations is facilitating.

Nearly a decade after the UN Human Rights Committee agreed that a Peruvian woman’s rights were violated for having been denied an abortion – and recommended that the Government compensate her – the UN human rights office announced today that Peru has said it will pay compensation for having refused her access to a legal medical procedure.