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The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) has warned that it will “react robustly” to threats of violence against those involved in elections following reports that the head of the elections commission had been threatened as the West African country seeks to emerge from years of civil war and anarchy.

Beyond the well-established principles of informed consent and confidentiality, social responsibility, including improved access to quality health care, figures high in a new Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Declaring that the recent arrests of a Cambodian journalist and a teachers’ leader on charges of defamation “are highly irregular, and illustrate a deeply worrying trend,” a senior United Nations human rights official today called on the authorities to reconsider the issue and ensure the two have free access to legal counsel.

World leaders will need to promote sustainable development and protect the human rights of indigenous people in order to bring hunger and widespread poverty to an end, United Nations human rights, economic and labour experts told a General Assembly committee on the issue of indigenous people yesterday.

The United Nations refugee agency has opened a new route home for nearly 6,500 Angolans in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), marking a new milestone in its voluntary repatriation programme that has already helped repatriate almost 200,000 Angolans who fled nearly three decades of civil war.

The head of the United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri presented his report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan today, after an earlier mission found Lebanon's own investigation seriously flawed and Syria primarily responsible for the political tension preceding the murder.

Voicing surprise at Arab League criticism of his Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today reaffirmed his full confidence in the official, Alvaro de Soto, and said he expected all parties to work with him in the common search for peace.

The United Nations, with core activities of keeping or restoring world peace, will undertake extensive reviews of programmes in peace building and human rights and tighten its policies on internal oversight and ethics, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report following up on mandates from the World Summit last month.

Citing continued instability in the Western Sahara stemming from the political impasse between the Moroccan Government and the Frente POLISARIO independence movement, as well as continued violations of their military agreement and alleged human rights abuses, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for a six-month extension of the United Nations peacekeeping mission there.

Energetic coordination, cooperation and engagement by Israelis, Palestinians and the international community are necessary to translate a positive development, Israel's disengagement from Gaza, into a sustained and negotiated peace, the top United Nations political officer said today.