Latest News

Nearly 6,000 people have fled fighting in Nigeria to neighbouring Cameroon and Niger in the past 10 days after reporting that several people had been killed, their villages bombed and at least two villages burned to the ground, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said today.

As United Nations officials welcome the signing of an agreement to end the fighting in South Sudan, humanitarian agencies are continuing their efforts to assist scores of civilians in need as a result of more than a month of violence.

The United Nations today called for security to be re-established along the main roads in strife-torn Central African Republic (CAR) to allow access for vital aid and humanitarian staff as 38 trucks with a month’s supply of food for 155,000 people remained blocked at the frontier.

Representatives of the Syrian Government and opposition groups have agreed to meet tomorrow for the first time ever in the same room, the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States said in Switzerland after another day of bilateral talks with both sides, which he described as “encouraging.”

If demand for new land on which to grow food continues at the current rate, by 2050, high-end estimates are that area nearly the size of Brazil could be ruined, with vital forests, savannahs and grassland lost, the United Nations today warned in a new report.

The United Nations human rights and humanitarian chiefs on Thursday voiced deep concern about reports of alarming levels of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, including the killing of many civilians and a policeman, and called for an immediate investigation by the authorities.

In a whirlwind of events at the World Economic Forum in Davos today Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlighted the vital need for Governments, business and civil society to cooperate whether in erasing gender inequality and harnessing “girl power” to reach development goals, combatting climate change, or eliminating hunger.

The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), which settles the damage claims of those who suffered losses due to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, today made $1.03 billion available to the Government of Kuwait.

Warning that terrorists and other armed groups appear to have reorganized “and gained some ability to operate” amid the already fragile security situation in northern Mali, the United Nations Security Council today called on all Member States to support the full deployment of UN peacekeepers in the country.

The security situation in Darfur deteriorated over the course of 2013 and remains volatile, a senior United Nations official told the Security Council today, while calling on all sides to join negotiations aimed at achieving a permanent ceasefire and comprehensive peace for the people of the strife-torn region of Sudan.