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The United Nations children’s agency issued an urgent appeal today for nearly $3 million as it steps up its support to tens of thousands of children evicted from their homes in Zimbabwe during the Government’s drive to clean up cities.

The United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has welcomed the efforts of women in the Indonesian province of Aceh, the area most devastated by last December’s Indian Ocean tsunami, to demand a greater role in the recovery process.

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Côte d’Ivoire and boosted its troop strength by less than half of what the head of mission requested. It also authorized Secretary-General Kofi Annan to initiate plans to redeploy troops, if necessary, from UN missions in nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone to help quell the simmering tensions in the divided country.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has sent a letter to the leaders of the G8 industrialized countries to rise to the challenge at their summit meeting next month and provide leadership on a full raft of issues, from improving the lot of Africa’s poor to combating terrorism and countering global warming.

Wrapping up a 5-day trip to Haiti, the United Nations peacekeeping chief is slated to visit the northern port of Cap-Haïtien this weekend, to review the situation with the military, civilian and police leadership of the UN mission there, a UN spokesperson said today.

The ongoing insecurity and re-emergence of violence affecting preparations for Afghanistan’s upcoming elections was being made worse by rampant corruption and fallout from the country’s thriving drug trade, senior United Nations officials told the Security Council today.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today paid tribute to Sissel Ekaas, his former special representative for the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), who passed away in her home country of Norway as a result of serious illness, according to a UN spokesperson.

The United Nations Security Council today endorsed the transfer of more than $220 million from the escrow account set up under the former UN arms inspection regime into accounts for the country's development and the repayment of its UN arrears.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the signing today of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Sri Lankan Government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) to establish a joint tsunami aid-sharing structure.

As the United Nations celebrates its 60th birthday this week-end, the focus is not so much on looking back to that distant day in San Francisco when 51 countries founded the new forum out of the ashes the World War II as on looking forward to September, when 191 states gather in New York to discuss revitalizing the world body.