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Visiting a camp in north-western Kenya, the chief of the United Nations refugee agency today promised that thousands of people driven from their homes in South Sudan by two decades of fighting could return to the region after the rainy season ends in October.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour today opened an Asia-Pacific regional human rights conference in Beijing with a call for "ever closer partnerships" to combat human trafficking.

On the International Day of the Disappeared today, a United Nations Working Group, which has sent 50,000 cases to 90 governments, expressed its concern about the under-reporting of the problem and the “implicit amnesties” that lead to impunity for those committing these crimes.

The International Federation of Journalists has sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, asking for an investigation of all the deaths of journalists in Iraq, which, according to figures cited by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), now total more than 80 since the war began in 2003.

With millions of people killed, injured or disabled in traffic accidents each year – mostly in urban areas of developing countries – and with burdensome health-care costs creeping ever higher, a new United Nations report has recommended that the world body’s 191 Member governing Assembly step up its efforts to reduce traffic risks and improve global rode safety.

Breaking off his holiday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan is returning to New York today to throw his support behind efforts to produce a comprehensive document for the September World Summit, barely two weeks before the gathering brings together nearly 180 Heads of State and Government at United Nations Headquarters.

The United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri identified three former heads of Lebanese intelligence and security agencies and a former member of parliament as suspects in the car bombing that also killed 20 other people, a UN spokesperson said today.

The newly elected Burundian Government, led by former rebels, faces the challenges of voter expectations for an improved economy, the reduction of high unemployment and an end to Tutsi-Hutu ethnic strife and persistent impunity for massacres and military coups, a senior United Nations official said today.

The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) today tightened security in the Albanian-majority province, stepping up police patrols on the streets of Serb enclaves after gunmen killed two Serbs and injured two others over the weekend.

The United Nations refugee agency has launched an awareness campaign in Spain on behalf of refugees and internally displaced people with a concert by Colombian singer Juanes in the north-western town of La Coruña.