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Thousands of schoolchildren in Bolivia, Ghana, India and Namibia will soon be learning via the Internet and other digital innovations thanks to a United Nations project that seeks to connect thousands of schools and villages in the developing world through information and communication technologies (ICT).

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and software giant Microsoft Corp. signed an agreement today in Geneva that will bring training and computer education for refugees in camps located in Kenya and the Russian Federation.

The main United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees launched an emergency appeal today for $193 million to relieve suffering in the occupied territories where three years of curfews, closures and conflict have plunged two-thirds of the people into dire poverty and hunger and limited their access to health and education.

With corrupt transactions amounting to some $1 trillion annually, 95 countries have already signed a new United Nations treaty to combat corruption worldwide, pledging among other things to return assets obtained through bribery and embezzlement to the country of origin.

With South-Eastern Europe described by the United Nations anti-crime agency as a “high-transit” region for human trafficking, mostly in women and children for sexual exploitation, senior officials from 13 countries in the area will meet next week to launch a training scheme to help police and special investigators tackle the problem.

As the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) moved into its third day today in Geneva, United Nations officials continued to stress the need for global cooperation in spreading the potential power of information and communications technologies (ICT) in development activities as well as taking into account the needs of those in poorer countries.

Meeting under the theme of “After Baghdad: United Nations Workers Under The Gun,” the UN Staff Union’s annual summit on security has been warned by the Security Council President that the UN “is no longer seen by terrorists as a neutral force, but rather as an enemy.”

A narrow window of opportunity has opened to re-start the Middle East peace process, but the situation remains fragile and the only viable solution is to follow the Road Map, the senior United Nations envoy for the Middle East told the Security Council today.

With 300 million Africans lacking sustainable access to safe water, a United Nations-sponsored conference on water agreed on a plan today to halve that number by 2015, while maintaining adequate water supplies to agro-industry and managing weather crises.

A United Nations staff team visiting Cambodia this week to help the country set up and operate a war crimes court to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge has reported that it has had a successful mission.