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In criminal justice processes worldwide, minorities face discrimination ranging from excessive and sometimes lethal use of force, torture by police, to longer periods of stay in pre-trial detention, discrimination during judicial procedures and biases influencing sentencing, according to the UN human rights expert on minority issues.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that the fight against tuberculosis (TB) is paying off, with this year’s death rate nearly half of what it was in 1990, but 1.5 million still people died from the disease last year, with more than half occurring in China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Eleven major international companies today agreed to promote and include persons with disabilities throughout their operations worldwide in a move the International Labour Organization (ILO) hailed as “not only just a good moral cause” but also “good for business.”

Warning of an “unpredictable” political and security situation in Darfur, a senior United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council today that a comprehensive resolution of the Darfur conflict, which would allow for the return of over 2.6 million displaced persons, required first and foremost a political settlement between the Government and the armed movements.

At a special meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council today, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stressed that Israeli-Palestinian violence will draw “closer to a catastrophe” if not stopped immediately, while President Mahmoud Abbas called for creation of a “special protection” regime for the Palestinian people, amid roiling tensions in the region.

Following a series of incidents earlier this week in the Central African Republic (CAR) capital of Bangui, the top United Nation official in the crisis-riven country strongly deplored the use of violence to resolve differences and had called on all Central Africans to exercise restraint “to avoid an increase of violence with serious consequences.”

On 31 October 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted the historic resolution 1325, drawing attention to the differential impact of armed conflict on women, their exclusion from conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and the inextricable links between gender equality and international peace and security.

The General Assembly today elected 18 States to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Council for three-year terms beginning on 1 January 2016.Those elected were Belgium, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Germany, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Panama, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland, Togo, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Leading food agencies of the United Nations warned that 46 per cent of the population from eight regions of Madagascar, comprising of 1.9 million people are food insecure, including 450,000 people who face chronic food insecurity.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the successful completion of voting in the first round of presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, which took place on Sunday.