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With the number of migrants fleeing to Europe the violence in their countries of origin continuing to increase, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, today urged the European Union to speed up the formulation of an adequate collective response to this unprecedented crisis.

A special United Nations international panel reviewing the role of existing international health regulations in the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is studying the use of possible sanctions and other mechanisms to ensure better compliance with what it described as “a very important legal instrument in order to improve the global health security.”

Novak Djokovic, the world’s top ranked tennis player, was today appointed Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), after having served as the agency’s Serbia Ambassador and promoting children’s rights within his own private foundation.

With the United Nations-supported political dialogue process in Libya nearing its last stages, “time is running out” for leaders on all sides and at all levels to make the “final push,” the head of the UN Mission in the country (UNSMIL) told the Security Council today.

Commending France’s “exemplary leadership” on efforts to tackle climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today affirmed that the international community is now at a stage where the final elements of the new climate agreement are being negotiated.

Near Gevgelija, a southeast town bordering Greece, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has established a child-friendly space with a mobile team to support women and children fleeing violence in their home countries and moving through the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is now delivering rice, beans, cooking oil and salt to more than 400,000 people affected by flooding in Myanmar and “reachable only on foot, after floods and landslides destroyed roads across the country,” the agency said today.

Amid the unremitting brutality of the war in Syria and a scorching summer heat wave, there is increasing evidence that parties to the conflict are using water to achieve military and political gains, warned the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the appointment of Koen Davidse, of the Netherlands, as his Deputy Special Representative in the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). He will succeed Arnauld Akodjènou, of Benin, in September 2015.

The climate change agreement world leaders are expected to sign in December “has to take us to a less than 2 degree global warming path because that is the ultimate test of the whole package that will come out of Paris,” according to Janos Pasztor, a senior United Nations official dealing with the issue.