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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned today’s killing of an Indian peacekeeper serving with the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) and called for an investigation into the attack in the country’s south.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today released his financial disclosure statement for 2006 to the public, honouring a promise he made on taking office, after submitting it for review to an outside financial and auditing company.

The United Nations General Assembly today condemned without reservation any denial of the Holocaust, with only Iran publicly disassociating itself from the consensus resolution which was immediately hailed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

A judicial review committee in Cambodia, looking to resolve differences that have stalled the long-awaited trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders, accused of mass killings and other horrific crimes during the 1970s, has made progress over the last two weeks but several “major issues” still need to be resolved, a United Nations spokesman said today.

The reconstruction of Lebanon and an upcoming international environmental summit topped the agenda during talks today in Paris between United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French President Jacques Chirac.

Jody Williams, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize and co-founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, will lead a five-person high-level mission to evaluate the human rights situation in the war-ravaged Darfur region, the United Nations Human Rights Council announced today.

Around 40,000 people in the impoverished Central African Republic (CAR) have been forced to flee their homes because of summary executions and ethnic violence, a joint United Nations mission reported today, as the world body’s top aid official warned of the appalling suffering from these “egregious violations of human rights.”

A truck was allowed to cross the Kenya-Somalia border to deliver much needed aid supplied by United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to the small town of Dobley where thousands of Somalis are taking refuge from recent fighting.

An external audit of all United Nations activities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) – called for by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon following press reports that funds from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) improperly went to the Government – will cover 1998 to the present and deal with issues ranging from staff hiring to hard currency payments, the world body’s senior budget official said today.

An independent United Nations human rights expert today called on Singapore not to proceed with tomorrow’s planned hanging of a Nigerian for heroin trafficking, charging that the island state’s Government has failed to ensure respect for relevant legal safeguards under international standards.