Latest News

The United Nations refugee agency has signed its first agreement with the Irish Red Cross on coordination between the two agencies to better help with reunification of refugee families in Ireland.

A steady flow of displaced persons is leaving the Somali capital, Mogadishu, to escape insecurity and violence there, the United Nations reported today.

The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has released $2.35 million for urgent humanitarian activities in Guinea, where the political and security situation has seriously deteriorated following a month of national strikes and deadly clashes.

Faced with an “explosive growth” in demand for United Nations peacekeepers around the world coupled with a “dramatically strained and overstretched system,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is proposing to split the current peacekeeping office into two to provide better planning, faster deployment and a more responsive process.

The United Nations envoy to Liberia today said “real progress” had been made this week in dealing with the impoverished country’s almost $4 billion debt, but acknowledged that major challenges remain in rebuilding, particularly in the security sector and in creating jobs, following 14 years of brutal civil war.

Senior United Nations officials today marked the tenth anniversary of the creation of the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women with praise for its accomplishments and a call for more action.

The top United Nations envoy to Iraq visited Turkey today as part of his ongoing efforts to muster regional support to bring stability to the war-torn country, the third such visit he has made in as many weeks.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will pay a three-day official visit to Vienna next week at an invitation of the Austrian Government, during which he will meet with President Heinz Fischer and Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer.

A skull and crossbones, a running person and radiating ionizing waves, all on a deep red triangle, joined other more common warning symbols today as part of a United Nations effort to reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources such as food irradiation and cancer therapy equipment.

Just days after launching a large-scale security operation to clean up one of Haiti’s most notorious hotbeds of criminal gangs, the United Nations peacekeeping mission has transformed the former crime boss’s headquarters into a free medical clinic, with clowns to cheer up sick children.