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For the second time this year, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has managed to deliver food inside an area undergoing heavy fighting in the central Yemeni city of Taiz, where residents are in desperate need of external food assistance.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) plans to sign an agreement with the Government of Italy tomorrow to establish a task force of experts focusing on the conservation of cultural heritage affected by crises around the world.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as the UN and its partners in Haiti, have welcomed the 14 February election by the Haitian National Assembly of Jocelerme Privert as the island nation's interim President, one week after the departure of former President Michel Martelly.

Welcoming the announcement by the Libyan Presidency Council on the formation of the Government of National Accord, the United Nations envoy there called today on the House of Representatives “to do what is right for Libya and its people” and endorse the nomination of the national unity government.

Although important steps were taken over the past year to uphold the values and advance the vision set out in the United Nations Charter, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed today that bringing the promise of the Organization's founding document to the most vulnerable must continue to be the goal of its Member States.

A United Nations human rights expert today called on the United Kingdom and Sweden to promptly accept a UN working group's ruling that Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, is being arbitrarily detained and must be allowed freedom of movement.

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Anthony Lake said today he is “appalled” by reports of attacks against four medical facilities in Syria, two of which are supported by UNICEF.

Increasingly complex and widening conflicts have taken a huge toll on children in much of the Middle East in 2015, with parts of Africa and Asia facing protracted and relapsing wars that show no signs of abating, a senior United Nations child rights official said today.

United Nations human rights experts have urged the Nigerian Government to ensure that the areas they claim to have liberated from Boko Haram forces are truly safe for the displaced persons to return.

The United Nations reported today that Afghan hostilities in 2015 left more than 3,500 civilians dead, including an unprecedented number of children – one in four casualties over the past year was a child – and nearly 7,500 others wounded, making this the highest number of civilian casualties recorded.