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The top United Nations refugee official today called for a policy of “burden sharing” to help host countries near the origin of outflows accommodate refugees and thus curb people smuggling and related transnational crime.

The United Nations refugee agency today said it is gradually re-establishing a presence in the remote areas of Liberia, close to the border with Côte d'Ivoire, where tens of thousands of people had been cut off from humanitarian aid for two months due to increased conflict.

A top United Nations development official has warned that the international community is falling far short of reaching targets set by world leaders in 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit, stressing that 100,000 people needed to be raised out of poverty every day, 200,000 must be provided sanitation and 400,000 more with safe energy in order to meet those goals.

United Nations relief agencies today reported the opening of a fifth food corridor into Iraq, the imminent return of more international staff and the dispatch of emergency medical supplies, but warned that rapidly dwindling chlorine supplies in the south could leave water untreated within weeks, with "potentially calamitous" results.

Oral arguments were concluded today in a case brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by the Republic of the Congo, which is seeking to block France from putting the country's leaders, including President Denis Sassou Nguesso, on trial for crimes against humanity and torture.

Striving to recover priceless antiquities looted from Iraq's museums, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced today that it was sending an expert team to Baghdad to help establish a database and prevent international trafficking in the stolen artefacts.

The value of priority supplies that can be shipped to Iraq from the United Nations Oil-for-Food pipeline has surged nearly $100 million, to $548.6 million thanks to a three-week extension granted the already adjusted programme, on which 60 per cent of Iraqis depend as their sole source of sustenance.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today he hoped the world body would play an "effective role" in the process of establishing a new Iraqi Government.

In Abidjan today, the United Nations launched a system-wide appeal to help stave off a humanitarian catastrophe for 3 million people in and around Côte d'Ivoire still reeling after months of civil unrest and ethnic violence that swept the country and threatened to engulf nearly all of West Africa.

Although at least one-third of Iraq's critical spring grain crop appears to have emerged unscathed from the recent conflict, the fate of the bulk of the winter crop of cereals, some 1.2 million tons of sorely needed wheat and barley, remains in doubt, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today.