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Secretary-General Kofi Annan today announced the appointment of Swedish Ambassador Inga Björk-Klevby as Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The resurgence of violence in Sudan's Darfur region and the Government's continued unwillingness or inability to restrain armed tribal militias, may threaten the peace talks, and the international community needs to apply renewed pressure for a successful outcome, the United Nations Secretary-General says in a report.

HIV/AIDS is a '"storm gathering offshore" in the South Pacific and is about to erupt in Pacific communities in a devastating way unless prevention and support programmes are strengthened, United Nations AIDS experts said today.

With elections in Côte d'Ivoire being postponed for a year amid security concerns and human rights violations, the chairman of the United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee is in the country's major commercial city of Abidjan today holding high-level meetings with signatories of the 2003 peace agreement and officials monitoring that accord.

Friction between leaders in Somalia is preventing the country's federal institutions from functioning effectively and if divisions intensify these fragile structures could be undermined, Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns in a new report to the Security Council.

The United Nations Secretary-General's representative in Haiti is in Brussels today for a two-day European Union (EU) donors' conference which he hopes will create an emergency fund for the troubled Caribbean country.

United Nations Member States must act to implement the decisions of last month's historic World Summit, which produced major progress as well as plans for further advancement, Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette has said.

As the world mobilizes to combat a potential deadly human bird flu pandemic, the risk of the virus spreading to the Middle East and African countries has markedly increased after the confirmed outbreaks in Romania and Turkey, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.

A senior United Nations refugee agency team sent to Morocco last week is still awaiting government permission for access to sub-Saharan African migrants reportedly being held in various parts of the country, the agency said today.

Athletes worldwide will be subjected to the same anti-doping rules and regularly tested, sanctions will be uniform, and fresh emphasis will be given to raise public awareness of doping’s adverse effects under a new United Nations-backed treaty that is the first binding and universal legal instrument seeking to eliminate the scourge.