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With more than 2.6 billion people – 40 per cent of the world’s population – lacking access to toilets and other sanitation facilities, the head of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) has urged governments to adopt low-cost technology to ensure adequate sanitation for all.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today that up to 88,000 people have fled Mogadishu this past weekend due to increased fighting – which is more than have left the Somali capital in the past four months.

Top United Nations officials today hailed the General Assembly’s adoption of a resolution encouraging the consolidation of peace on the Korean peninsula and the laying of groundwork for reunification.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is carrying out a project to help some 80,000 people in Peru affected by an earthquake which caused widespread death and destruction there in August.

More than 250 Ethiopian pastoralists in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region from over 17 different ethnic groups will gather at a five-day United Nations-sponsored debate and celebration next month aimed at promoting an exchange of ideas.

Two independent United Nations human rights experts have called on the Dominican Republic to combat what they describe as a “profound and entrenched problem of racism and discrimination” against blacks in general – and Haitians in particular – in the Central American nation.

Following the attempt by a French non-governmental organization (NGO) to fly them out of Chad, the 103 children held in an orphanage appear to be in good health and are doing fairly well, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported today.

Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon Magnus, a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), today began a four-day visit to Burundi as part of his work to promote global antipoverty targets.

The United Nations General Assembly today once again urged an end to the commercial, economic and financial embargoes imposed on Cuba by the United States for nearly half a century.

Top envoys from the United Nations and the African Union chairing talks in Libya on the troubled Darfur region of Sudan today welcomed the Khartoum Government’s unilateral declaration of a cessation of hostilities and called on all parties to the conflict to make a similar commitment without delay.