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More than 4.2 million Malawians will need $88 million in emergency humanitarian assistance consisting of food and nutritional aid over the next six months, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said today.

The newly-established United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) got a boost today from two of the world's largest democracies when United States President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh co-sponsored a fund-raising event on the margins of the World Summit.

Responding to the invitation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to sign, ratify or accede to a range of treaties at the World Summit, heads of State began taking action today on the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which first opened for signature this morning.

The Chief Prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has called on Serbia to arrest and turn over one of the major figures indicted for genocide by early next month and has noted that two of the three lesser accused who had been hiding in Russia would be transferred soon.

Prompted by an alarming rise in deaths of boat refugees, a group of maritime experts and the United Nations refugee agency have come up with a series of recommendations on how companies and States should handle people marooned at sea, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) announced today.

African leaders addressing the United Nations Summit meeting in New York today said their continent should have permanent representation on the Security Council, whose agenda is dominated by conflicts there.

In today's globalized and interlinked world, multilateralism is more essential than ever to meet the challenges posed by poverty, terrorism and human rights abuses, world leaders addressing the United Nations Summit meeting in New York said today.

With concern growing over the spread of polio in the Horn of Africa, the United Nations-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative today announced an ambitious new immunization campaign aimed at reaching more than 34 million children and preventing the crippling disease from re-establishing itself in the region.

A crippling shortage of jet fuel has slashed the airlifting and airdropping of food aid in southern Sudan at the height of the annual hunger season, cutting deliveries by half at the worst time of the year, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported today.

Young people must do active community service, participate in social change, contribute to policy and take the initiative to make governments listen to their ideas on all the issues to be discussed at this week’s World Summit in New York, said youth speakers at a United Nations-sponsored forum in Bangkok, Thailand.