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The head of United Nations peacekeeping today began a week-long visit to Sudan, where the world body currently has two operations – one to support the 2005 north-south peace deal and the other to quell the violence that has plagued the western region of Darfur since 2003.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) today called for renewed international efforts to arrest the top leaders of the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) after a series of recent attacks in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in which dozens of civilians have been killed, scores of schoolchildren abducted and tens of thousands displaced.

Work has begun on a new year-long United Nations study aimed at helping the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people achieve their right to education.

The top United Nations envoy to Afghanistan today stressed the need for a political “surge” to boost the prospects for peace in the strife-torn nation and to respond to urgent humanitarian concerns such as access for the delivery of vital food aid.

Dramatic changes due to the Russian-Georgian conflict in South Ossetia have cast a veil of uncertainty over the future function of the 14-year-old United Nations mission entrusted with overseeing the ceasefire accord between the Government and Abkhaz separatists in north-western Georgia, according to the latest UN report on the region.

The world’s 450 million small farmers, responsible for the livelihoods of over 2 billion rural poor people, will gain greater access to scientific and technological advances and agricultural research under a United Nations-backed agreement signed today.

The world’s poor and uprooted people are increasingly at risk as the world struggles with a combination of adverse economic, social and political trends that threaten to trigger even greater displacement in the future, the top United Nations refugee official warned today.

Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro has warned countries that the current financial crisis, which is impacting all economies and exacerbating the suffering of millions, is also threatening the efforts to slash poverty, hunger, disease and other socio-economic ills by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has highlighted the plight of Albania’s Roma children, especially the poor rates of school enrolment among the minority community, during a two-day visit to the South-Eastern European country.

United Nations humanitarian agencies are dispatching aid and staff to southern Kyrgyzstan, where dozens of people have been killed and hundreds of homes destroyed after an earthquake struck the remote, mountainous region last night.