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Many of the political expectations with which Kosovo began the year yielded fewer results than hoped, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission there said today, expressing hope that next year will see clear progress on political dialogue accompanied by necessary progress at community level.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed Canada’s announcement that it was resuming support to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) by donating CDN $25 million for the agency’s essential health, education, relief and social services and humanitarian programmes that benefit 5.3 million Palestine refugees.

Returning from recent visits to Haiti, Sudan and South Sudan, a senior United Nations humanitarian official said that while low funding for aid operations around the world challenge prompt and needed relief, the deteriorating humanitarian situation in conflict-riven South Sudan is the most “alarming.”

The Office of the United Nations High Commissions on Refugees (UNHCR) welcomed a statement today from the Government of Kenya in which it reiterated its continued search for solutions for refugees at the Dadaab camp, where it has been hosting and protecting refugees from Somalia for many years.

Community violence reduction (CVR) programmes are not well-known, but are proving to be an effective peacekeeping tool, senior United Nations officials said today during an event to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the launch of CVR in Haiti.

As the United Nations Climate Conference, known as COP 22, continued its work today in Marrakech, Morocco, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged greater efforts to mobilize funding to address climate change, especially to support developing countries.

In the wake of three States withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, the top United Nations human rights official has underlined that there is no substitute for the Court and called on the international community to “place [their] collective shoulder behind [the] institution.”

The justice system in the Central African Republic (CAR) must be urgently strengthened if the country is to achieve lasting peace, a United Nations human rights expert has said, ahead of a major donors’ conference in Brussels, Belgium, tomorrow, which aims to raise funds in support of the country’s national peace-building plan.

Aware of their vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have begun taking action to confront the phenomenon and today, several highlighted their initiatives at the United Nations Climate Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, known as COP 22.

Underscoring the importance of tolerance, particularly in today's diverse world, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have called for seeing the world through the prism of “we the peoples” and to collectively build societies that are more inclusive, more peaceful and more prosperous.