Latest News

With violence intensifying between the Government and Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka, the top United Nations relief official today called on both sides to ensure full protection of civilians on the Indian Ocean island, where over 300,000 people have already been uprooted from their homes by the conflict.

The senior United Nations envoy to Afghanistan today reported economic growth in the war-ravaged nation, but emphasized that strengthened cooperation with Pakistan is key to stability in their volatile border region.

The top United Nations relief official for the Horn of Africa, on a week-long mission to the drought-stricken region, today saw first-hand the human cost of the scourge during a visit to a hospital treating malnourished children in Djibouti.

After meeting today with the Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny of Côte d'Ivoire, the United Nations Security Council noted the progress achieved in the country's peace process under his watch, but expressed grave concern at what it called serious delays in the demobilization of combatants and preparations for upcoming elections.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today issued new global guidelines on measuring the growth rates of infants and young children that will provide evidence and guidance for the first time about how every child should grow, thereby highlighting when improvements in nutrition or other areas need to be made and reducing death and disease.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, launching a United Nations programme to encourage institutional investors to weigh the environmental and social impact of their investments.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed a recent royal proclamation in strife-torn Nepal reinstating Parliament and said this move, along with a decision by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to declare a ceasefire, opens the door for a political solution to end the decade-old conflict in the Himalayan kingdom.

Deliberate political decisions are combining to create a humanitarian crisis for people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a senior United Nations official with the major relief agency meeting their needs told a UN seminar in Cairo today.

As governments prepare to gather in Geneva to review progress on a major treaty banning hazardous chemicals, a United Nations official urged them to take concrete action to eliminate the dangerous substances.

Calling for intensified efforts to boost States' cooperation with measures to keep nuclear, chemical and biological weapons out of the hands of terrorists and black marketeers, the United Nations Security Council today extended the mandate of the committee overseeing the issue for a period of two years.