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With refugee numbers in Kenya failing to decline despite peace moves in Somalia and Sudan, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed for $6.7 million to feed nearly a quarter of a million refugees in two northern Kenyan camps until the end of 2005.

An environmentally friendly weapon against locusts using a natural fungus that kills the crop-devouring insects in one to three weeks has been successfully tested under large-scale field conditions for the first time, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

A Chinese city’s project for economic development that draws inspiration from traditional medical practices to tackle "imbalances" degrading the environment has been selected by a United Nations-linked panel as the year’s best cultural practice contributing to sustainable development.

With 4,000 new non-governmental and civil society organizations (NGOs) mushrooming in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s one-party rule, the United Nations is holding a three-day workshop for some 30 Iraqi human rights defenders in Amman, capital of neighbouring Jordan.

The mortality rate in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan has declined significantly, but the health of the population remains "extremely fragile," according to a new survey undertaken by the Ministry of Health of the Government of Sudan (GOS), United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

A United Nations project to help Northern African countries manage shared groundwater through nuclear science has received a $1 million grant from an independent body that provides grants to developing countries for projects benefiting the global environment and promoting sustainable livelihoods in local communities.

Expressing concern over shooting in the security area separating Eritrea and Ethiopia, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the Security Council to advance the resolution of the boundary dispute by visiting both Horn of Africa countries.

With a peace agreement ending the decades-long civil war in southern Sudan and the arrival of United Nations peacekeepers, Secretary-General Kofi Annan is calling on international donors and the Sudanese parties to meet high expectations for significant improvement in the situation on the ground.

A veteran United Nations relief official was today named head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the body that has been the main source of support for Palestinian refugees for the past 55 years.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi begins 10 days of overseas travel tomorrow to take part in two major summit meetings and deliver a keynote address on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the ambitious set of targets for slashing a host of socio-economic ills afflicting the world by 2015.