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“Significant progress” has been made in dealing with incidences of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by United Nations peacekeepers, but much more needs to be done, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping said today, calling for more support from Member States.

New operations by the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) against Mayi-Mayi militia in Katanga are sparking fears of a further flight of civilians in a region where 120,000 people have already fled their homes since November, United Nations emergency officials said today.

Eritrean authorities are still detaining two locally recruited staff from the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), a UN official said today, but they have released 25 others.

The head of the United Nations investigation into last year’s assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri held his first meeting in Damascus with Syrian officials today, a UN spokesman said.

The United Nations Security Council today urged Ivorian officials to help humanitarian groups return to the troubled West African nation since recent political unrest prompted many to leave.

The co-founder of a Malaysian anti-corruption organization has been appointed to be the special adviser on the establishment of a United Nations Ethics Office, a critical part of current efforts to reform the world body, Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today.

An international donor conference has elicited promises of humanitarian aid for 1 million vulnerable people in the Central African Republic though no new financial commitments were made, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

As heavy fighting continued in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, the senior United Nations envoy for the fractured Horn of Africa country today appealed to the leaders of the warring parties to end their hostilities and respect the security of civilian populations caught in their crossfire.

The deadly bird flu virus continues to spread in poultry in Nigeria and could cause a regional disaster despite strong control efforts taken by the Nigerian authorities, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today, calling for a vaccination campaign involving thousands of veterinarians and international donor support.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has pledged to mobilize international support for Haitian President-elect René Préval’s declared intention to put children at the top of his political agenda for the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.