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Ending war is only the first step in peacebuilding, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, stressing the need for well-planned and coordinated international support in the immediate aftermath of conflict to ensure the consolidation of stability.

The Czech Republic has become the latest country to ratify the Rome Statute, the pact that established the International Criminal Court and tasked it with trying people accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The tensions that have recently flared up in southern Lebanon have begun to ease, a top United Nations official said today, adding that all sides have expressed their commitment to restore stability to the area.

Many of the 60 developing countries considering whether nuclear power is in their future are turning to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assess their readiness to embark on the nuclear path for their energy needs.

United Nations peacekeepers are no strangers to working in some of the world’s most hazardous regions, and they are now helping out on a new battlefront: combating climate change.

A senior United Nations peacekeeping official continued his tour today of the war-ravaged eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where he is evaluating the state of the country’s troubled prison system.

Individual countries, regional organizations and partners of the United Nations must all do more to ensure the international community has “a credible capacity for rapid responses” to any future situations similar to previous episodes of genocide or ethnic cleansing, the top UN human rights official said today.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon held talks today with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki that focused on the issue of his country’s reparations to Kuwait in the wake of Iraq’s 1990 invasion and subsequent occupation of its neighbour.

Eliminating river blindness is feasible with ivermectin, a commonly-used drug that has contributed to significantly controlling the disease in endemic countries, according to evidence published today in a United Nations study.

United Nations independent human rights experts today said that they stand ready to assist Russian authorities in carrying out an independent investigation into the recent string of murders of human rights lawyers, journalists and defenders, including the killing last week of Natalia Estemirova, a prominent activist looking into alleged rights abuses in Chechnya.