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The situation in Côte d’Ivoire continues to cause great concern, foreign nationals have sought refuge in United Nations buildings and the atmosphere in the commercial capital of Abidjan remains very tense and volatile despite the restoration of relative calm following several days of violence in the West African country.

The United Nations will ask donors at a meeting later this week in New York for more than $1 billion to address the world's “forgotten emergencies” – crises spawned by conflict, natural disasters or both.

A United Nations-appointed commission of inquiry has arrived in Sudan to determine whether acts of genocide have occurred in the country’s strife-torn Darfur region, which the international organization has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Music can bring people together to make the world a more harmonious place, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today as he hosted the latest in a series of talks on issues outside the normal range of United Nations topics and on matters at the forefront of both the humanities and natural sciences.

A Malaysian expert in political economics and development has been appointed to a senior post in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) to lead and coordinate statistical demographic and macroeconomic data gathering and analysis.

In the largest such joint action to date the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will support military operations by the national Congolese army to protect the Walungu area in the eastern part of the country from rebel attacks.

More than 160 Moroccan soldiers arrived in Haiti yesterday to join the United Nations Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH), bringing the operation’s uniformed strength to nearly 4,500 out of an authorized total of almost 8,000 troops and civilian police.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaidaie, met today in New York for talks on the situation in Fallujah as well as preparations for elections next January.

Prominent Afghans are joining the international and grassroots chorus calling for the release of three United Nations workers abducted 10 days ago in Afghanistan.

Meeting in an emergency session after French forces in Côte d'Ivoire were attacked and the Ivorian Government stepped up air strikes against rebel-held areas in the north, the United Nations Security Council today called for an end to fighting in the West African country.