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The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) plans to feed nearly 2 million people in southern Sudan this year, the agency said in a statement today marking the second anniversary of a peace accord that ended 21 years of war between Government and rebel forces.

A United Nations-backed campaign to fight malaria in Africa has received its first-ever challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a pledge to match dollar for dollar up to $3 million in individual contributions to the programme to fight a disease that kills more than 1 million people every year, mostly children under five.

Condemning the latest attacks on civilians in strife-torn Sri Lanka, which left more than 20 dead and dozens maimed, the United Nations office on the island today called for their immediate protection and warned of worsening conditions in the east, where thousands of people remain trapped by the fighting between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

A senior United Nations official in Afghanistan today called on the Afghan and Pakistani governments to end their mutual recriminations and cooperate in fighting the Taliban insurgency in the south of the war-torn country, saying it is being fuelled from both sides of the border and urging greater action against the rebellion in Pakistan itself.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the Government and political leaders of Guinea-Bissau to exercise utmost restraint and focus on development and reconciliation amid heightened tensions following the killing of the small West African country’s former Navy Chief.

The United Nations refugee agency today launched a $60-million appeal to fund its work over the next year for hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) affected by the conflict in Iraq.

To learn first-hand of the obstacles to development facing Central America, the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is on a ten-day tour of the region.

Security in the Central African Republic (CAR) has deteriorated over the past two months, especially in the north and along the borders with Chad and the Sudan, according to the latest United Nations report on the impoverished country where humanitarian agencies are struggling to reach up to 1 million people affected by violence.

Welcoming reports that Myanmar recently released dozens of political prisoners, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for the freeing of all others, including democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 10 of the past 16 years.

The Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur has embarked upon a mission to the war-torn Darfur region to push ahead with efforts to find a permanent solution to the conflict which has killed more than 200,000 people since 2003.