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United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has hailed the African Union's new Peace and Security Council as a potentially powerful tool for the prevention, management and resolution of violent conflict on the continent.

United Nations relief agencies are continuing to rally aid for Sudanese displaced from the country's Darfur region in the west, providing clean drinking water, airlifting emergency supplies to the area and distributing food aid.

Arriving for a four-day visit to Uganda, the head of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today called on both the Government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to protect the youngest victims of the fighting, which has left more than 1.6 million people displaced in just the past 24 months.

As Iraq enters "the period of greatest challenges," relief efforts will have to be adapted in order to succeed, a senior United Nations official told donor nations meeting today in Doha, Qatar.

With photos of prisoner abuses in Iraq and reports of civilians under attack in Sudan's Darfur region grabbing worldwide attention, Secretary-General Kofi Annan hosted a lecture today at United Nations Headquarters in New York that looked at the various dimensions of human rights.

With the African Union (AU) and other budding institutions beginning to drive the continent's efforts to empower itself, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the forty-first anniversary of Africa Day provided an occasion to intensify the search for solutions to ongoing problems like the human suffering in Sudan's western Darfur region and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

A retired Croatian general has been charged by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia with responsibility for his alleged role in a 1993 operation against a Serbian enclave.

Twenty-six Palestinians who last year fled the conflict in Iraq have returned from a United Nations refugee camp in Jordan's eastern desert, a UN spokesman reported today.

Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Adviser, today continued consulting leaders in Iraqi on who would represent the country's people in a transitional government set to assume power after 30 June.

With livestock and avian diseases spreading across boarders more rapidly and increasing the likelihood of human health emergencies, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has teamed with an international agency monitoring animal health to set up a global information and early warning system on highly contagious animal illnesses.