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Citing persisting instability in number of African countries – from South Sudan to Mali and Libya, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed that building peace and restoring institutions in post-conflict settings are long-term processes that must be rooted in a country’s historical, political, social, cultural and economic contexts.

United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon and a group of UN rights experts today appealed to the Government of Indonesia to stop the reportedly imminent execution of a number of prisoners for alleged drug-related crimes.

Amid reports that Aleppo is ‘de facto besieged,’ as the war-battered city is now almost completely encircled by Syrian troops, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator today reiterated his demand for safe, regular and sustained access to the quarter of a million people trapped behind the front lines, and stressed that “all options must be considered.”

Some 23 million people in southern Africa are in need of urgent support to be able to produce enough food to feed themselves and avoid being dependent on humanitarian assistance until mid-2018, the United Nations agricultural agency has warned.

Warning of a possible rise in heatwave deaths due to climate change, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) today called for measures to reduce mortality from this natural hazard.

Many African elephants continued to face serious threats to their survival in 2015 from the illegal trade in ivory and unacceptably high levels of poaching, although the sharp upward trends in poaching since 2006 have started to level off, according to the Secretariat of the United Nations-backed treaty regulating wildlife trade.

To bring an end to the Boko Haram threat in the Lake Chad Basin region, affected countries must address the root causes that contributed to the emergence of the group, including the social, economic and political grievances of marginalized communities, the top United Nations political affairs official said today.

Following a week-long visit to southern Africa, the United Nations deputy humanitarian chief has called for increased efforts to help mitigate the impact of the La Niña weather phenomenon occurring towards the end of the year.

In conflicts, the United Nations is commonly associated with peacekeeping and UN ‘blue helmets,’ but increasingly the international community’s focus is on “peacebuilding” – the idea of supporting a country throughout all stages of a conflict, including post-conflict recovery and socio-economic development, and on preventing the outbreak of fighting.

In a telephone call with the Turkish Foreign Minister today, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sought an update on current investigations and measures to hold those responsible for the attempted coup to account, and reiterated his expectation that Turkey adhere to its international human rights obligations.