Latest News

The Security Council today extended for another six months the mandate of the United Nations force that for the past 32 years has monitored the ceasefire between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights.

The battle to end the mass killings and displacement in Sudan’s Darfur region is nearing “a watershed moment” that will determine whether the international community will take decisive action or stand by and witness a repeat of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the actor Don Cheadle said today.

United Nations health agencies have given a guarded welcome to United States trials in Africa showing that male circumcision halves the risk of HIV infection in men in heterosexual relations, warning that it should never pre-empt other preventive measures such as the use of condoms.

The United Nations today launched a $237-million humanitarian appeal for Somalia for 2007 to alleviate the suffering of 1.8 million people, including 1.4 million chronically hungry and 400,000 internally displaced, as the war-torn country reels from the triple blow of continued fighting, drought and devastating floods.

A former businessman and youth organizer implicated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide will be sentenced next month after he pleaded guilty today before a United Nations war crimes tribunal to the charge of murder as a crime against humanity.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today launched an international mission to help Côte d’Ivoire finalize and fund a plan to clean up and rehabilitate sites contaminated by deadly toxic waste that was illegally dumped in and around the commercial capital, Abidjan, in August.

A Korean home learning system and a programme offering degrees by distance education in the Finnish region of Lapland are the first laureates of a prize awarded by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to encourage the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education.

The United Nations refugee agency has expressed concern after Yemeni security forces opened fire earlier this week on one of the many boats carrying people across the Gulf of Aden during the annual smuggling season, killing two people.

Welcoming a major new treaty that seeks to bring peace to Africa’s troubled Great Lakes region, which has witnessed some of the world’s bloodiest wars, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on the country’s leaders to focus not only on ending conflict but also on democracy, economic development, regional integration and humanitarian issues.

A resurgent Japan will help the Asia-Pacific region offset any impact from a slowing United States economy, but there are increasing risks of a downside to the recent strong growth in developing countries, according to a new study by a United Nations regional body.