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Trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna would be banned and trade in certain types of shark controlled if the recommendations of a United Nations-backed group of independent experts are accepted by the parties to an international treaty on endangered species.

A pioneering Chinese scientist in the field of bioethics, a specialized discipline dealing with ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine, was awarded the 2009 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) Avicenna Prize today.

United Nations peacekeepers were sent today to protect a camp of refugees from Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region in the north-east of the Central African Republic (CAR) and humanitarian staff working there after an attack, apparently by bandits, left three people dead on a nearby road.

At the start of the most critical week in global efforts to forge a new deal to curb climate change Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today that the world stood at the crossroads between a sustainable future and a path to catastrophe.

Talks resumed at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, today after African nations briefly suspended negotiations over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, currently the only legally binding pact on climate change.

The Security Council today renewed for another six months the 45-year-old United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cyprus, citing “a rare opportunity to make decisive progress in a timely fashion” to reunify the Mediterranean island after a history of fighting between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities.

The United Nations refugee agency is slated to build a further 10,000 homes in Afghanistan next year in a bid to ease the return of Afghans who have fled decades of violence in the war-wracked nation and encourage more to come home, a senior official told reporters in Kabul today.

The senior United Nations envoy to the Middle East has condemned the burning and desecration of a mosque in the West Bank, describing the attack as part of a worrying wider pattern of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.

More than three quarters of those people who died in disasters this year lost their lives to extreme weather events, which caused nearly $15 billion in damages worldwide, the top United Nations official on disaster risk reduction announced today.

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with safeguarding intellectual property rights today welcomed the European Union’s ratification of the so-called Internet Treaties.