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A senior United Nations envoy ended a nine-day visit to Timor-Leste today after the recent outbreak of violence there, heralding a possibly beefed up presence by the world body in the small nation that it shepherded to independence four years ago.

United Nations agencies are stepping up aid to Indonesian earthquake victims with plans to feed 100,000 people for the next two months, an emergency immunization campaign for 1.3 million others and efforts to preserve historic sites and boost education in the Yogyakarta area where 6,000 people died and at least 200,000 more lost their homes.

With World Football Cup fever in full swing, the United Nations labour agency is preparing to wave a symbolic ‘Red Card’ against child work as part of a series of global events beginning this week to mark the World Day Against Child Labour.

A shortage of steady and timely funding for food aid to Sudan risks increasing malnutrition among millions of people and threatens pacts to end conflicts in the South and in the western region of Darfur, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today.

With unemployment in post-war Liberia having reached a record 85 per cent, the head of the United Nations labour agency today called on participants at the agency’s annual conference for stepped up international assistance in creating jobs in the West African country.

The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, a group founded by the United Nations system’s anti-HIV/AIDS programme, will visit four United States cities, starting tomorrow, to raise public awareness about the unique challenges facing women and girls in a world with the disease.

Working hours across the industrialized world are becoming increasingly unpredictable due to a growing 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week economy, creating worker-employer tensions and requiring new policies to counter the risk this poses to the “work-life” balance, according to a new study launched today by the United Nations labour agency.

While welcoming Myanmar’s decision to release human rights defender Su Su Nway, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged the authorities to follow this with further measures to promote national reconciliation, including lifting the remaining restrictions on democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political leaders.

With yet one more Iraqi journalist murdered, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today yet again stressed the vital role of a free press plays in establishing democracy, voicing the hoped that “the authorities will be able to stop this wave of assassinations which is as tragic as it is senseless.”

Stressing its determination to end all forms of misconduct, including sexual exploitation and abuse, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) today issued a new report on the problem among its personnel, six of whom faced disciplinary action stemming from investigations by the world body’s independent oversight office.