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As Jordan struggles with severe water shortage issues – ongoing drought, population growth and now waves of refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict – the country is at a critical moment, said a United Nations independent expert today, emphasizing its need to take a holistic, long-term approach to its water and sanitation strategies.

The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today called on Governments, the private sector and civil society to scale up efforts to provide quality education for girls, stressing the transformative benefits this has for all of society.

With nearly 13 million Syrians uprooted from their homes, senior United Nations officials warn that without a political solution to the conflict, which today enters its fourth year, Syria and its people face years more of destruction and continued brutality.

Owing to the negative vote of one of its permanent members, the United Nations Security Council today failed to adopt a draft resolution which urged countries not to recognize the results of this weekend's referendum in Crimea.

The head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) today urged the international community as well as the Congolese Government to adopt concrete measures that will build on the current stability in the country, saying “it is now up to us to win the peace...with energy, conviction and persistence.”

Deeply concerned about violent confrontations between the police and members of opposition in Burundi, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging both the government and political parties to de-escalate tensions and to campaign against political violence ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appealed yet again for the international community to help bring the rival Syrian parties closer on concrete measures to end the conflict, saying “it is not enough for representatives of the Government and opposition to be in the same room, what matters most is what they do there.”

As a result of the increased production of genetically modified crops worldwide, the United Nations food agency warns in a ground-breaking survey that an increasing number of incidents of low levels of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are being reported in traded food and feed.

United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Šimonovic, announced today the immediate deployment of a UN monitoring team throughout crisis-torn Ukraine to help establish the facts surrounding alleged human rights violations, including in Crimea, and serve to de-escalate tensions in the country.

Local masons in Timbuktu today started to lay down the first earthen bricks to reconstruct World Heritage mausoleums damaged when radical Islamists occupied the northern part of the country in 2012.