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The United Nations today marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women with calls for states to take legal action against the global scourge, for societies to change a mindset that permits such abuse, and for women themselves to stand up and speak out against a culture of shame.

Although an estimated 3 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East still suffer genital cutting every year, the age-old ritual could be eliminated within a single generation through open public discussion and legal action, according to a new report by the United Nations Children’s fund (UNICEF).

The head of the United Nations agency entrusted with curbing the spread of nuclear weapons has called on Iran to take speedy action to provide additional information and take other measures that are “indispensable” for ensuring that its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this year’s Nobel peace Prize co-laureate, announced today that its €525,000 share of the award will be used to create a fund for fellowships and training to improve cancer management and childhood nutrition in the developing world.

Following a new confirmed human case of bird flu in China’s south-eastern Anhui province, the United Nations health agency is joining a mission by the Chinese Health Ministry to investigate exposure to the virus, which in a worst case scenario could mutate into a human pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.

With a reduction in the price of sugar threatening the economies of sugar-producing small island developing states (SIDS), their senior government officials have called on the sixth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference, meeting in Hong Kong next month, to pay greater attention to the “special needs and specificities of small states.”

Victims of the earthquake in Pakistan continue to receive high-level support from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), as its chief, António Guterres, and its Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina Jolie, visit areas worst-hit by the 8 October disaster.

Traditional arts as diverse as the spare, formalistic Japanese Kabuki theatre and the brightly painted oxcarts of Costa Rica were proclaimed representative cultural treasures of the earth's peoples today by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

With the Security Council having decided to strengthen the United Nations peacekeeping missions in Côte d'Ivoire and Haiti, the General Assembly has approved increases in funding for both missions over the year ending next June.

A wide range of animals, from gorillas to giant mastiff bats to strange-tailed tyrants, were promised added protection today under decisions taken by parties to a United Nations wildlife treaty.