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Measures taken by Ecuador’s Congress to resolve the crisis resulting from the illegal dismissal of the Supreme Court last year are insufficient and violate United Nations principles, and urgent action is needed to re-establish the rule of law, a top UN legal expert said at the end of his latest visit to the Andean country.

A United Nations report released today calls on the Government of Zimbabwe to stop the demolition of homes and markets, pay reparations to those who have lost housing and livelihoods and punish those who, “with indifference to human suffering,” carried out the evictions of some 700,000 people.

Dubbing a report by his special envoy on recent evictions in Zimbabwe “profoundly distressing,” United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on the Zimbabwean Government to stop immediately an operation that has done “a catastrophic injustice” to as many as 700,000 of the country’s poorest citizens.

In a race against time with the rainy season already at hand in remote southern Chad, the United Nations refugee agency has already relocated nearly a quarter of the 10,000 needy refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) who are threatened with being cut off from all aid.

While the international community’s humanitarian, political and African-led military strategy for peace and stability in Sudan was finally bearing fruit, the situation was still extremely fragile, particularly for millions of people in war-torn Darfur, and would perhaps require decades of sustained efforts to set right, the top United Nations envoy for Sudan warned today.

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann Veneman today visited Ugandan youngsters who had been abducted by rebels in a brutal but largely ignored civil war in which up to 40,000 children flee their outlying villages to the safety of towns every evening to avoid being kidnapped.

The election process in Burundi can serve as a lesson to Central Africa for the maturity and transparency with which they are being conducted, according to a senior United Nations official who has been helping to organize the polls in an effort to restore peace and stability in a country that has been torn by decades of ethnic war.

With a United Nations report out today saying the Zimbabwean Government has evicted 700,000 people from urban housing, the UN humanitarian aid chief said the country’s emergency is complex and also includes high unemployment, widespread food insecurity and 25 per cent of the population living with HIV/AIDS.

Only days after doubling its emergency appeal for Niger, where 2.5 million people face a hunger crisis and thousands of children have already died, the United Nations will again increase the amount it is seeking, but at last funds are coming in after a long period of neglected warnings, the top UN relief coordinator said today.

The United Nations Security Council today called on international donors and financial institutions to ‘generously’ assist the fragile, newly-elected institutions in the Central African Republic (CAR), stressing that their support will be essential for the impoverished country’s socio-economic recovery.