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As the world’s developing countries mark the 40th anniversary of the Group of 77 (G-77) – now grown to a coalition of 135 – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for fairer access to development, warning that the world has become a much more unequal place than it was four decades ago.

With SARS, bird flu and other diseases linked to animals threatening human epidemics, the United Nations health agency is hosting a three-day meeting of international experts at its Geneva headquarters next week to improve surveillance, avert the occurrence and minimize the impact of such illnesses.

The United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) today shined the spotlight on the plight of child soldiers in Uganda, the crisis of children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and overfishing as a threat to marine biodiversity as it sought to raise awareness of some of the important international issues and developments that often do not get sufficient media attention.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is "deeply disturbed" by images appearing in the media of Iraqi prisoners being mistreated and humiliated by United States prison guards, his spokesman said today.

The United Nations refugee agency today awarded its top prize to a Russian organization advocating on behalf of refugees and people uprooted from their homes seeking safe haven in the Russian Federation.

Kicking off his third visit to West Africa, the United Nations’ top refugee official, Ruud Lubbers, is in Sierra Leone today to review arrangements for completing the return of the remaining Sierra Leonean refugees in the region and preparing for the repatriation of Liberians to their country.

The United Nations human rights chief today called on authorities in Thailand to quickly investigate the killings of more than 112 people in the south of the country during confrontations between law enforcement officers and assailants.

With funding erratic and countermeasures seemingly random the European Union (EU) will miss its goal of halting species loss by 2010 unless it does more to prevent the decline of its most nature-rich areas of farmland, the United Nations environmental agency warned today.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, better known for its efforts to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, today drew attention to its role in another battle – the war against diseases of mass destruction.

With poverty affecting 44 per cent of the inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean and social inequalities among “the highest in the world,” a senior United Nations official has called for coherent and effective programmes and domestic and external financing to remove these obstacles to the region’s development.