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The Security Council today extended for another year the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and expressed its intention to review the operation’s mandate in 12 months or sooner, if requested by the Iraqi Government.

Describing the more than four years of “slaughter” in Syria as a “shameful symbol of the international community’s divisions and failure,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appealed to the Security Council to endorse his Special Envoy’s recommendations on reaching the political solution that “all parties claim to support.”

A United Nations-backed plan to develop and pilot disaster risk management standards for the hotel industry in Asia and the Pacific, home to 80 per cent of the world's disaster events, has been announced today.

The Security Council today authorized the Member States of the African Union to maintain the deployment of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) for an additional 10 months, until 30 May 2016.

West Africa is at risk of a large meningitis outbreak unless drug manufacturers increase vaccine production by 5 million doses before the 2016 meningitis season starts in January, the United Nations and leading public health organizations warned today.

A political solution is more urgent than ever to end the “futile, hopeless” cycle of brutality and violence in Syria, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today, urging the Security Council to consider its options through “the eyes of the beleaguered, now long-suffering” civilians.

An increasing number of people in Iraq, including families with children and the elderly, have encountered deadly ambushes as they try to escape areas controlled the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levan (ISIL) by risking their lives on a treacherous mountain journey to safety, the United Nations human rights office reported today.

The conflict in Yemen has brought “appalling damage” on an already suffering people, the top United Nations humanitarian official told the Security Council today, pressing the international community to redouble its efforts to secure a pause in the fighting respected by all parties, thus providing space for relief workers to reach desperate civilians and for the warring sides to agree a durable ceasefire and, ultimately, a political solution.

Living conditions for more than half a million refugees living in Jordan is becoming increasingly tough, the United Nations refugee agency warned today on the eve of the third anniversary of the establishment of Za’atari camp, which has grown into the largest refugee camp in the Middle East.

The verdicts in the trial of 37 Qadhafi regime officials, including against the former leader’s son, Saif al-Islam Qadhafi, handed down today by the Tripoli Court of Assize, has drawn serous concern from senior United Nations human rights officials in Libya, as well as in Geneva, amid fears the trial did not meet international standards on a number of fronts.