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The United Nations Security Council today extended the mandate of the UN Integrated Peace-Building Office in Guinea-Bissau, known as UNIOGBIS, for an additional 12 months so that it can continue to assist the country in its path towards peace and reform.

International task forces established to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access and a ceasefire in Syria “are moving in the right direction,” a United Nations mediator said today, ahead of a Friday deadline to accept a truce.

As part of the last day of his visit to South Sudan, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with President Salva Kiir, stressing the urgency of forming a Transitional Government, as well as spoke by phone with former Vice-President Riek Machar and visited a protection of civilians site.

The above-average rainfall caused by El Niño that is expected in parts of South America until May could cause floods and increases in diseases spread by mosquitoes, including malaria and the Zika virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

A United Nations report published today has documented widespread human rights violations and abuses committed in Libya since the beginning of 2014, recommending urgent measures to address “the complete impunity that prevails” and to strengthen and reform the justice sector.

The top United Nations human rights official expressed serious concern today over security measures adopted last week by the police chiefs of five European countries, which he warned are already negatively impacting the human rights of refugees and migrants in southern and central Europe and compounding the “already exceptionally difficult situation” in Greece.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with its presence in more than 170 poor and vulnerable countries, must rise to the challenge of advancing a “big, new, more complex, and transformational” sustainable development agenda, the head of the agency said today at al ministerial meeting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its founding.

United Nations efforts to enhance international peace and security may grab headlines, but the vast majority of the Organization’s resources are devoted to development, and to advancing the Charter's pledge to "promote higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development."

The top United Nations humanitarian official in Sudan said today she is deeply concerned about the plight of more than 85,000 newly displaced civilians in North Darfur state who have fled their villages in recent days as a result of an escalation of conflict in the region’s Jebel Marra area.

Europe is backing into an even greater refugee crisis by tightening border restrictions on the hundreds of thousands fleeing conflicts elsewhere, the head of the United Nations refugee agency has said on a visit to the island of Lesvos in Greece.