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Developing countries have made strides in providing access to clean water and schooling, but efforts to achieve other internationally agreed targets to combat extreme poverty and a host other global ills are falling behind schedule, according to a United Nations report released today.

With crucial agricultural genetic resources at risk, developing countries should be enabled to fully exploit biotechnology tools to stop the decline of biodiversity and use their wealth of such resources as an insurance against climatic and other changes, according to a new United Nations study released today.

Initial checks on children in makeshift camps for displaced persons in Timor-Leste today indicated that 15 per cent need immediate treatment for malnutrition after violence ripped through the small South-East Asian nation, driving more than 155,000 people, 15 per cent of the total population, from their homes.

Facing a shortfall of more than a third in requested aid for Afghanistan, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has renewed its urgent appeal to donors to come up with “critical” additional funding to finance its activities for the rest of the year.

The risk of bird flu evolving into a more transmissible agent in humans remains high, based on the widespread distribution of the H5N1 virus in poultry and the continued exposure of humans, according to the United Nations health agency’s first analysis of epidemiological data on all cases reported to it from December 2003 to April 2006.

In a new look at why more than half the world's workforce cannot earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) will consider possible solutions that can generate productive employment and decent work as it opens its annual session in Geneva on Monday.

A pioneering initiative to make the 2006 FIFA World Cup not only entertaining but environmentally-friendly is has already emerged as a winner, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

In the margins of the African Union (AU) Summit meeting being held in Banjul, Gambia, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today discussed four flashpoints on the continent, Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe and Côte d’Ivoire, with the respective leaders of each country.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today voiced concern about the arrest of numerous Palestinian officials in Gaza amid military operations, stressing that Palestinian institutions must be preserved in order to achieve a lasting settlement.

The senior United Nations envoy to Iraq condemned "in the strongest possible terms" today's deadly bombing in Baghdad as well as the kidnapping of an Iraqi member of parliament, calling for her immediate release.