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In its latest condemnation of "grave breaches of international human rights" in Colombia's decades-old civil war, the local United Nations human rights office has deplored the killing of three civilians, two of them young girls, and the wounding of 26 others during fighting last week.

The international community should provide anti-malarial medicines and nets to malaria-endemic countries free of cost as they try to halve the disease in their populations in the next four years and work towards halting its spread by 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report to the General Assembly, due to start its major annual public discussions this week.

A new donation of €33 million (euros) – about $41.4 million – will help provide safe drinking water for 2.1 million people across 1,400 rural communities in Nigeria, representing the largest ever grant from the European Union (EU) to a single project assisted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The first of more than 150,000 refugees who fled fighting in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will begin to go home from Tanzania next month to the most secure areas under an official voluntary repatriation operation, the United Nations High Commission for Refuges (UNHCR) said today.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today voiced the hope that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, “and the cooperation and coordination between Israelis and Palestinians which made it possible,” can lead to the revitalization of the Road Map plan that that sees two states living side by side in peace.

While Antarctica continues to serve as a unique example of environmental cooperation among nations, a number of concerns – including the depletion of the ozone layer, the growth of tourism and the emergence of biological prospecting – call for a timely response by the world community, according to a report released at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The General Assembly this evening wound down the work of its current session as intensive talks continued on a draft United Nations reform plan slated for consideration by national leaders gathering at the world body later this week.

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in Mozambique will go hungry unless the international community helps fill a dramatic funding shortfall, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.

A site in southern Rwanda which at its peak hosted 2,000 Burundians, who fled their country over the past year amid fears of election violence, has closed after its residents either returned home or were transferred to another camp, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

With extreme weather such as severe flooding, drought and heat waves blighting Europe, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and its regional members are drawing up an action plan at a nine-day session currently under way in Heidelberg, Germany, to mitigate the worst effects.