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The head of the United Nations anti-narcotics agency today called upon the European Union (EU) to do more to help farmers in poor drug-producing countries like Bolivia to find sustainable alternative livelihoods as a crucial component in fighting the global drug problem.

A growing number of business and industry groups are making efforts to improve their environmental and social performance, especially in such fields as global warming, but more still needs to be done, according to a new United Nations report released today.

Seven months after the earthquake that devastated Pakistan in October, malnutrition persists as one of the major problems for children under the age of five in the affected areas, but the situation is gradually improving, thanks in part to an ambitious United Nations-backed survey of survivors.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour today called on the members of the new Human Rights Council, who were elected in a landmark vote yesterday, to work in the “global interest” and to act quickly ahead of the first meeting, set to start in Geneva next month.

More than half a million children under the age of five in Kenya’s Central and North Eastern Provinces have been immunized against measles and polio in the first phase of a United Nations-backed campaign targeting 5.5 million youngsters after a measles outbreak infected 1,600 people, 42 of them fatally, in the last six months.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan today called for new approaches to energy use with a focus on greater efficiency, increased investment in renewable sources and new technologies.

Haiti’s first census in 24 years shows that half of the Caribbean country’s population is younger than 20, unemployment is a staggering 33 per cent and less than half of the school-age children are attending primary school, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which helped finance the effort, said today.

The newly launched United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) today announced its first disbursements for the world’s most under-funded emergencies, with 12 States, 11 of them in Africa, benefiting from a total of $32 million.

The Security Council today re-established for a six-month period the mandate of the Monitoring Group on Somalia, set up to investigate the 1992 arms embargo, as the top United Nations envoy to the war-torn country appealed for all sides to end the bloody violence in the capital Mogadishu and “step back from the brink.”

As the waters continue to rise in rain-flooded areas of Suriname, a six-member United Nations team is headed to the South American country to assess the situation of the tens of thousands of people who have been affected, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is sending a cash grant, said today.