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Laws aimed at protecting Afghanistan’s wildlife, waterways and forests, believed to be the first legal conservation tools in the country, have been developed by the Government with assistance from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the agency announced today.

The United Nations-backed body that oversees a global treaty governing trade in endangered species announced today that it will not approve the 2006 export quotas for caviar and other sturgeon products until the exporting countries provide more data on the long-term survival of their sturgeon catch.

The situation between Ethiopia and Eritrea has reached a dangerous stalemate, warns Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a new report to the Security Council, holding out the possibility of withdrawing the United Nations mission (UNMEE) deployed to keep a five-year truce between the two countries.

The United Nations has been providing aid to documented Sudanese refugees who were recently released by the Egyptian authorities after last week’s fatal confrontation between police and refugees protesting in a Cairo park.

United Nations agencies are working to help Pakistani earthquake survivors suffering after this weekend’s heavy rains and snow exacerbated their already desperate living conditions, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today condemned the recent attack on a United Nations recreational facility in Gaza and called on the Palestinian Authority to prosecute those responsible.

The United Nations today launched its International Year of Deserts and Desertification to raise global public awareness of the advancing deserts, of ways to safeguard the biological diversity of arid lands covering one-third of the planet and protecting the knowledge and traditions of the 2 billion people affected by the phenomenon.