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Prevailing hostilities in Ukraine in recent days are putting the ceasefire agreed to in September under “continuous and serious strain,” a senior United Nations political official told the Security Council today, warning against the possibility of a return to full-scale fighting despite prospects of hope offered by recent parliamentary elections.

The World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, closed today with a declaration urging action to mainstream education in the United Nations post-2015 development agenda.

The Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, today made a passionate appeal to combat stigmatization surrounding the disease by calling for a global social media campaign to “express solidarity and to show we are anti-discrimination.”

The United Nations Security Council today reaffirmed its condemnation of all acts of piracy and robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia, reiterating its calls for the international community to intensify their efforts in fighting what it said was a threat to the East African country’s stability.

The United Nations stands ready to work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its member States in strengthening national capacity to protect human rights, provide justice and promote accountability in the region, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

The new measures announced by the Governments of China and the United States in addressing their greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades is a positive step towards achieving a more comprehensive accord at a global climate conference to be held in Paris next year, top United Nations officials have confirmed.

Opium cultivation and production in Afghanistan reached record levels this year, with the former increasing seven per cent to 224,000 hectares in 2014, and production levels potentially climbing as much as 17 per cent, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Although significant declines in child deaths from pneumonia demonstrate that strategies to defeat the disease are working, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stressed today that much more is needed to stop hundreds of thousands of children from succumbing to the preventable illness as it marked the fifth World Pneumonia Day.

Amid an outburst of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged all parties to do everything they can to reduce the simmering hostilities and continue, through dialogue, on the path to peace.

Following the announcement in July that the records of the United Nations War Crimes Commission were made open to the public for the first time in 70 years, a panel discussion examining the historical significance and potential use of the records was held this afternoon at UN Headquarters in New York.