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More than 360 displaced families have been given new homes in northern Sri Lanka under a United Nations-backed programme after spending a decade in overcrowded welfare centres for internally displaced persons (IDP).

Stressing that the empowerment of women is vital to achieving peace and security, improved living standards and respect for human rights, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has underscored the need to support the work of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The United Nations Human Rights Council, convened in special session, today strongly deplored the continued violent repression of peaceful demonstrations in Myanmar, calling on the authorities to release without delay all those recently arrested as well as all political detainees, including democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The United Nations refugee agency today reported another critical shortfall in its funding for Sudan, this time threatening its reintegration operations to help the South recover from two decades of civil war, just a week after announcing that its aid for more than 2 million people in the strife-torn western Darfur region was imperilled.

A Maltese lawyer who has fought for the rights of boat people fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea, sometimes at great danger to herself, was presented with the most prestigious United Nations refugee award last night, and immediately pledged to use the money to further her efforts.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed for urgent new funding to feed 470,000 people in Mauritania, warning that flooding is putting greater pressure on its dwindling supplies for both flood victims and returning refugees.

The message of Mahatma Gandhi, whose peaceful struggle helped birth an independent India and inspired countless people around the world, is needed now more than ever amid rising global tensions, intolerance and conflict, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari today met with the South-East Asian nation’s top general on the last day of his mission in response to the deteriorating situation there amid reports of the use of force and of the arrest and beating of demonstrators.

The Muppets are going to school in Kosovo in a new project to teach tolerance to children in the Albanian-majority Serb province, which the United Nations has run since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid ethnic fighting.

The head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) characterized inclusive development – which allows developing countries to reap gains from globalization – as a “crucial moral and political imperative.”