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Almost 400,000 people, out of the more than 2 million who escaped Government-militant clashes in northwest Pakistan, have now returned to their homes, the top United Nations relief official in the country announced today.

In a move to help China and other developing Asian countries improve the quality of their statistical reporting, the United Nations has signed its first-ever trust-fund agreement for technical cooperation with the world’s most populous State.

The bureaucratic complications involved in planning and running the electoral process form the greatest obstacle to holding twice-delayed presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire on schedule by their new date of 29 November this year, the top United Nations official to the country said today.

The United Nations’ Geneva headquarters has joined a select group of environmentally-friendly entities, having been awarded a prestigious certificate recognizing its ‘green’ efforts.

The United Nations today called for an additional $200 million to provide aid to more than half a million people uprooted by violence in Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) and Darfur region of western Sudan, as demand mounts for humanitarian assistance.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged Israel to freeze its settlement activity in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority to intensify its efforts on the ground as he stressed the need for “an agenda of transformative change” in the Middle East peace process.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the top United Nations envoy to Sudan have welcomed today’s court ruling on the disputed oil-rich area of Abyei, and called on the parties to proceed with the remaining tasks under the peace deal that ended the country’s north-south civil war.

Mother-to-child HIV transmission rates can be dramatically cut with the administration of a cocktail of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs over a longer period of time to pregnant and breastfeeding women, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) announced today.

António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has been awarded this year’s Calouste Gulbenkian International Prize for his efforts to promote human rights and inter-cultural dialogue.

The United Nations human rights chief today welcomed the latest move to set up a regional body to protect the rights of people living in South-East Asia, highlighting the need to appoint “independent and impartial” experts to serve on it when it is launched in October.