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In an historic action that brings to fruition a central reform proposed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the 2005 World Summit, the Security Council and the General Assembly today acted in concert to establish a new body that aims to prevent countries emerging from conflict from falling back into chaos.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has closely followed developments in Bolivia ever since street protests led to the resignation of President Carlos Mesa earlier this year, today voiced satisfaction at Sunday’s peaceful elections and offered United Nations help in addressing the challenges that lie ahead.

A final batch of Angolans returned home from Botswana Monday, marking the end of a three-year-long, United Nations-sponsored repatriation programme that has brought back more than 123,000 Angolans since the end of the country’s bloody civil war.

As part of his campaign to revamp the United Nations and root out misdeeds and mismanagement, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has signed a new whistleblower protection policy, to take effect on 1 January, aimed at ensuring that the world body functions in an open, transparent and fair manner.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) should continue to devise tools to help country offices manage projects and demonstrate results, a top financial advisory company said among its many recommendations in a final report on the agency’s oversight of tsunami relief and reconstruction.

Whatever the final status of the United Nations-administered Serbian province of Kosovo, majority Albanians must discuss decentralization and minority Serbs must participate in the talks, the UN special envoy on the issue said today.

In his final briefing to the Security Council on Sierra Leone today, the top United Nations envoy there said that the country’s rebirth from the horrors of civil war is continuing, long with a growing sense of stability and an improvement of basic services, though international security assistance is still needed.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today strongly condemned what he called a vicious attack on a village in West Darfur, Sudan yesterday, in which 20 people, including women and children, are reported to have been murdered by several hundred militia who also burned huts and looted livestock.

With only 10 days left before the expiration of the original deadline of the Middle East Diplomatic Quartet’s so-called Road Map peace plan for a final and settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a top United Nations official stressed today that the plan is still the agreed framework for reaching a lasting peace in the Middle East.

A white bull was slaughtered, children sang and danced, women ululated and men pounded drums in celebration as a group of South Sudanese refugees went home over the weekend in the first repatriation organized by the United Nations refugee agency for those who fled the 21-year-long civil war in southern Sudan.