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While supporting the Sri Lankan government’s relief efforts for some 204,000 people currently displaced in the north and east, who have fled their homes as a result of the escalating violence, the United Nations’ top emergency relief official said today there are serious concerns about lack of access to some areas, especially in the Tamil north.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has made two helicopters available for the use of the two contenders as they campaign in the run-off round of the country’s historic presidential elections.

Alarmed by the lack of progress in demobilizing Colombia’s child soldiers and the rising number of accidents there involving landmines, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) appealed today for more than $2.5 million to carry out its work in the South American country.

In a week marking both World Poverty Eradication Day and World Food Day, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called for simultaneous action on both issues, warning that it will be impossible to eradicate one blight without the other.

In a major breakthrough for Burundians stuck in limbo in Tanzanian refugee camps for many years, the United States has agreed to interview 13,000 of them under a United Nations refugee agency resettlement programme, and the agency said today that it expects most of them to be accepted.

Timor-Leste’s then interior and defence ministers and defence force chief acted illegally in transferring weapons to civilians during the violence that shook the small South-East Asian country early this year and should be prosecuted, according to a United Nations report on the crisis released today.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon today reported further progress towards securing Israel’s withdrawal from the last position it still occupies in the south of the country after this summer’s war with Hizbollah.

As the rapid surge of refugees fleeing to Kenya from war-torn Somalia brings the 2006 total to more than 34,000 and fears grow that this could climb to 80,000 by the end of the year, the United Nations has issued an emergency appeal for $35 million to meet the increased needs over the next six months.

Member States should follow the lead of the United Nations Human Rights Council and quickly adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples without change, an independent UN expert has told the General Assembly.

The 140,000 refugees from Myanmar living in Thailand may soon be issued identity cards by Thai authorities that should permit them to move freely outside their camps to work legally, the United Nations refugee agency said today after a recent meeting with the new Prime Minister.