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While welcoming recent progress in the implementation of the Linas-Marcoussis peace accord for Côte d’Ivoire, members of the United Nations Security Council today stressed again their concern at the humanitarian situation in the country.

With the development of commercial diagnostic tests for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) progressing slower than initially hoped, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said its network of laboratories are working to expedite the process by providing critical specimen to scientists.

The situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) needs to be tackled on two fronts – taking steps to calm war-ravaged Bunia and pressing forward on the political side with the formation of a transitional government, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

Faced with the proliferation of non-government organizations (NGOs), the chairman of a panel of prominent figures convened by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today he would seek “some creative mechanisms and instruments” to smooth a consultative relationship between the world body and non-government actors.

Thousands of Liberians have fled a new round of fighting in southern Liberia and arrived in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is now working to alleviate the added pressure on local communities already burdened by other refugees and the effects of their own country’s civil conflict.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called United States President George W. Bush’s summit with Arab leaders in Egypt today “an important step in our efforts” to resolve the Middle Eastern conflict.

The United Nations consolidated appeals for countries in crisis has so far received only one-third of the $5.34 billion needed for life-sustaining operations in 2003, according to a mid-year review by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today welcomed the arrival in Mozambique of rice donated by Algeria, boosting the agency's ability to scale up food aid for hundreds of thousands of drought-hit Mozambicans.

The top United Nations envoy for Iraq arrived in Baghdad today pledging to assist in the “critical efforts” to quickly establish a representative Iraqi government, as UN-supplied food rations again began reaching the civilian population.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today launched an effort to improve coordinated intelligence gathering and information exchange to help customs officers beat illegal trade in hazardous wastes, chemicals and endangered species.