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Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of opportunity, although their disempowerment is a critical factor crippling the Arab nations’ quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture, according to a new United Nations-sponsored report released today.

An independent United Nations expert on safeguarding human rights while fighting terrorism is to visit Israel at the invitation of its Government, possibly during the first half of next year.

The United Nations and its partners today launched their largest ever appeal for emergency aid to the occupied Palestinian territory – more than $453 million to help address a rapidly deteriorating situation after donors cut off funds to the Government when Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to exist, won elections earlier this year.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has enlisted two stars of the new film Blood Diamond, set against the backdrop of the devastating chaos and civil war that enveloped Sierra Leone in the 1990s, to help raise much-needed awareness of the hunger and poverty that stalk more than 850 million people around the world.

The United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) has announced that a senior police adviser from the Philippines has been appointed as the Mission’s new Police Commissioner.

The head of the main United Nations agency dealing with HIV/AIDS today said the global threat posed by the disease requires an extraordinary response.

Fifteen years after nearly being annihilated by Saddam Hussein, almost half of Iraq’s fabled marshlands of Mesopotamia, considered by some to be the original Garden of Eden, have regained their 1970s extent, thanks to a multi-million dollar programme managed by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan came out strongly today against any effort to question or deny the Holocaust after reports that Iran would host a conference next week to discuss the scale and nature of the Nazi slaughter of 6 million Jews – already dismissed as a myth by its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Highlighting Afghanistan’s “precarious” security situation, caused by the growing insurgency and terrorist activity linked to the illegal drug trade, the United Nations Security Council today urged the Government and donors to do more to bring peace and safeguard human rights, but remained upbeat on the overall development strategy.

The United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone announced today that it has appointed an experienced lawyer from the United States as its next Chief Prosecutor.