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The United Nations refugee agency today called on all States to continue to refrain from forcibly returning Iraqi asylum-seekers to Baghdad, Kirkuk and other violence-prone areas in the centre of the country, warning that the situation was still too precarious due to continuing violence and serious human rights violations.

United Nations staff members gathered today to pay tribute to the 17 colleagues killed two years ago in a terrorist attack at the world body’s offices in the Algerian capital.

A senior United Nations official today wrapped up a visit to Sri Lanka aimed at determining first-hand the well-being of children affected by the recent conflict between Government forces and separatist Tamil rebels in the north of the Indian Ocean nation.

Even though young people aged 15 to 29 in the so-called Mercosur countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay are better educated than ever before they are more likely to be unemployed, while a Latin American youth is 30 times more likely to be murdered than one in Europe, according to a United Nations report released today.

New texts are under consideration at the landmark climate change conference under way in Copenhagen, Denmark, and while they are a key step forward in the talks, the United Nations today stressed that they do not presuppose either a final outcome or its legal form.

People around the world can now keep tabs on countries’ promises and proposals on combating climate change, thanks to a new online tool launched today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Public hearings wrapped up today in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the question of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia early last year, with the court now ready to begin its deliberations.

Climate change is posing a serious threat to communities in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, bringing both drought and catastrophic floods to hundreds of millions of people, according to a new United Nations-backed report.

The United Nations marked Human Rights Day today, the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by stressing the enduring need to eliminate all forms of discrimination, with officials in the world’s most crisis-plagued regions – from Iraq to Afghanistan to Somalia – appealing for tolerance in the interests of peace.

A big step towards promoting linguistic diversity on the Internet was taken today, with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) signing an agreement to help put the first multilingual domain names into operation.