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The United Nations relief coordination office today called for help for many girls and women recently expelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from Angola’s diamond district, saying they were sexually abused by Angolan military officials searching them for hidden gemstones.

With most of the powers at its disposal increasingly outdated, the United Nations health agency is calling for more potent tools to keep up with emerging diseases such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and bird flu, which have recently spread havoc in Asia and beyond and left the world at risk for pandemics.

With 720 million people living in mountain regions covering more than a fifth of the world's land surface, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today announced a major international initiative to promote sustainable agriculture and rural development in these ecologically fragile areas.

The United Nations refugee agency said today “the dire security situation” and upsurge in fighting in Iraq have further undermined its capacity to operate effectively inside the country, “where the needs just get bigger and bigger.”

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) ended its 60th session in Shanghai today with the unanimous adoption of the Shanghai Declaration calling for the highest priority to be given to reducing poverty in the vast region that is home to more than half the world’s people.

Despite the war in Iraq, the international agenda must be balanced with attention to environmental protection, social progress and economic growth, especially as they concern water, sanitation and settlements, in the struggle to improve human welfare, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

A high-level United Nations humanitarian mission today headed to Darfur in western Sudan, where an estimated 1 million people have been uprooted in an ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Arab militias against the local black African population, including more than 100,000 people who have fled to neighbouring Chad.

While the outcome of Saturday's vote in Cyprus on a unity plan was disappointing, the United Nations had come closer than ever before to resolving one of the most delicate and complex conflicts on its agenda, a senior UN official told the Security Council today.

In the 20th anniversary year of the massive Union Carbide factory gas leak that affected nearly 250,000 people in Bhopal, India, the United Nations labour agency today observed its annual "World Day for Safety and Health at Work" with a worldwide commemoration of those who lost life or health in workplace accidents.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the late United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who was killed last year while serving as the Secretary-General's envoy for Iraq, has been honoured by the East West Institute (EWI) with its annual 2004 Peace Building Award.