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The Security Council today extended until 30 June 2013 the mandate of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which monitors the ceasefire in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, and expressed grave concern at recent violations by the Syrian Armed Forces in the mission’s area of operations.

The United Nations human rights chief today called on Iraq to move towards abolishing the death penalty, saying – in response to the latest periodic report on Iraq’s human rights record – that the rate of executions in the country this year “cannot be justified.”

The credibility of the Internet depends on how much civil society – the broad label given to worldwide activism outside government – is able to take part in its evolution, a United Nations independent expert said today.

A United Nations independent expert today called on the Government of Madagascar to take “urgent measures” in its fight against poverty, adding that poverty was the driving factor in the island nation’s slavery epidemic.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan is providing shelter to thousands of civilians, mainly women and children, who have sought protection in a base in the country’s northwest today.

The Security Council today strongly condemned the ongoing attacks and atrocities carried out by the armed group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and urged that the United Nations regional strategy designed to tackle the threat be carried out as soon as possible.

Expressing their strong concern over the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR), the members of the United Nations Security Council today condemned the attacks conducted by armed groups over the last few days in the country’s north-east, as well as related human rights abuses.

Poorly functioning government systems in Afghanistan mean that development gains are at risk of slipping amid the mounting international troop drawdown, the top United Nations official in the country said today.

A group of independent United Nations experts today called for clear and firm political will to prevent enforced disappearances, which continue to persist around the world 20 years after the adoption of a declaration aimed at eliminating this heinous practice.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) today acquitted former Congolese rebel leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to a deadly 2003 assault on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), saying it could not convict him “beyond reasonable doubt” based on the evidence presented.