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Polluted water and poor sanitation are the biggest killers of children in Asia and the Pacific, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for the region (ESCAP) says in a new publication released ahead of an upcoming UN forum on the environment and development.

The Security Council today established a pool of temporary judges to help the United Nations war crimes tribunal for Rwanda complete its work as soon as possible.

North America's gains in arresting environmental pollution and degradation have recently been eroded by choices related to consumption patterns, according to a report released today by the United Nations which calls on the region to accept more responsibility for protecting the natural world.

In a bid to battle deadly flooding that has forced the evacuation of more than 200,000 people, the Government of the Czech Republic has called for international assistance for affected areas in Prague, Bohemia and the north-western part of the country, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, today reiterated her concern about the critical human rights and humanitarian situation in Colombia, which she said had worsened as a result of terrorist acts committed since the inauguration of President Alvaro Uribe last week.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Personal Humanitarian Envoy travelled today to the West Bank, where she held discussions with the Palestinian leadership and gained a first-hand look at a number of relief projects in the area..

Four years after clashes in Namibia drove hundreds of people to Botswana, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has begun a repatriation effort targeting those who now want to return home, a spokesman for the agency announced today.

Iraq's crude exports have plunged sharply under the United Nations oil-for-food programme, which allows Baghdad to use a portion of its petroleum revenues to purchase humanitarian relief, according to the UN office running the effort.

Aiming to bolster maternity health services as refugees stream back to war-ravaged Afghanistan, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has set up an emergency mobile hospital in Kabul, a UN spokesman announced today.

Amid reports of difficult conditions prevailing in their home country, Angolan refugees from settlements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have slowed down their spontaneous returns, particularly in the last week, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.