Latest News

To help Central America prepare for an upcoming hurricane season that could rival the violent season of 2005, the United Nations top humanitarian relief official is heading to Guatemala this week for a high-level regional meeting, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

As United Nations agencies move from emergency relief to reconstruction in Pakistani regions devastated by last October’s earthquake, they are preparing an action plan to prevent an aid gap in the remaining winter period and to improve sanitation to prevent disease in the spring.

Distrust of the United Nations and warnings of Al Qaida involvement are growing in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, the UN’s envoy to the troubled African nation warned today, saying that both are linked to the uncertainty surrounding peacekeeping operations in strife-torn Darfur.

Taïeb Chérif, an Algerian with over 30 years of commercial airline experience, has been reappointed to a second three-year term as Secretary General of the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), effective 1 August 2006.

With a break in food supplies looming in Afghanistan in March, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today called on donors to immediately make up an $11-million shortfall in critical funds to feed 3.5 million vulnerable people.

Warning that there is “a huge risk for conflict to rise again” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC), the top United Nations refugee official has called on the international community to provide greater support for the vast country’s transition to full democracy for the first time in 45 years.

The humanitarian situation in south-eastern Ethiopia continues to deteriorate, with increasing livestock deaths, serious shortage of water and high levels of malnutrition, United Nations officials reported today in their latest update on the drought in a region where more than 1.5 million people need urgent aid to stave off starvation.

With pressure growing on worldwide fish stocks, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today recommended that governments assign more fishing rights as a means of promoting conservation.

Thirteen years after it was first filed, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s case against Serbia and Montenegro for violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention will at last be heard publicly by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations for disputes between States, starting today.

The United Nations today confirmed its support for the Iraqi initiative to rebuild the Shiite Shrine of Imam Ali Al-Hadi bombed last week as well as other damaged religious sites in the country.