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Timor-Leste, the world’s youngest country, has become the newest applicant for membership of the United Nations tourism agency, a global forum that plays a decisive role in promoting the development of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

United Nations efforts to help restore the marshlands of southern Iraq, considered by some to be the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden, after they were massively damaged by the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein, have moved a step closer with the identification of six pilot project sites.

Extrapolating from a survey conducted in two areas of Niger hard hit by locust infestation and scanty rains, a United Nations agency estimates that nearly 350,000 children younger than 5 could be suffering from malnutrition, with the risk of stunted growth.

The Palestinians must do more to reorganize their security forces to prevent violence and Israel must halt all settlement activity if recent hopes for resolving the Middle East conflict are to be sustained, the top United Nations political officer told the Security Council today.

Fresh from consultations at Headquarters in New York, the senior United Nations envoy for Iraq is back in Baghdad, re-immersing himself in efforts to ensure that all sectors of society take part in the political transition, especially with the task of writing a new constitution.

Côte d'Ivoire Government troops and the fighters from the West African country's major rebel force started their four-day withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the frontline today and it has been proceeding without a major hitch, the United Nations peacekeeping mission said.

Ahead of an historic Asia-Africa summit this weekend in Indonesia, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today briefed top delegates for nearly three hours, spotlighting his sweeping proposals for United Nations reform and calling for new commitments across a broad range of development challenges.

With aid workers unable to reach about 25,000 displaced people in a camp in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a cholera outbreak, the situation is likely to worsen not only for the infected, but also for those who need basic supplies of food and water, the United Nations emergency coordination office said today.

Two teams of United Nations human rights experts have wrapped up separate fact-finding missions in Nepal, one looking into the needs of an expanded UN rights office in the Himalayan kingdom and the other examining the situation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) there.

The overall improved political climate in Western Sahara has not ended the stalemate between the parties on the core issue of how the people of the territory can exercise their right of self-determination, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report recommending a six-month extension of the United Nations mission there to maintain stability.