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Aiming to deal with a variety of problems plaguing the mechanisms at the United Nations for redressing staff grievances and dealing with misconduct, an independent panel of experts today issued a series of recommendations for overhauling the world body’s system of internal justice.

An independent United Nations human rights expert has urged an inquiry into an attack on an electricity power station in Gaza that has exacerbated an already critical health situation threatening the lives of civilians and could constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.

In the same year it stopped receiving food aid from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), China emerged as the world’s third largest food aid donor in 2005, according to the latest annual Food Aid Monitor from INTERFAIS, the International Food Aid Information System, the agency said today.

World cereal stocks are expected to decline sharply in 2006, due to a slight decrease in global cereal output and significant growth in utilization, according to the latest forecast by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which predicted that food emergencies will continue in a number of countries.

Compensation, relocation and livelihood opportunities for survivors of the massive quake that rocked Pakistan last October will be discussed on a radio programme launched by the United Nations refugee agency and Pakistan’s Government to update people displaced by the disaster on issues and policies affecting their return and recovery.

Aiming to help war-ravaged Sudan to restore its natural habitat, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is holding a two-day workshop in the country to allow key players to exchange ideas and chart a course towards a more sustainable future.

The senior United Nations envoy to Somalia today urged leaders of the Transitional Federal Government and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Courts to restrain their respective forces and called for them to resume the dialogue they started in Sudan last month.

Expressing his condolences to Indonesia after this week’s deadly earthquake and resulting tsunami, a United Nations official stressed the importance today of disaster early warning systems, as emergency UN food assistance and other supplies were distributed to the tens of thousands displaced by Monday’s disaster that killed at least 500 people on the island of Java.

Renewing his urgent appeal for an end to the civilian carnage in Lebanon and northern Israel and condemning both that country’s use of excessive force as well as Hizbollah’s recklessness, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today proposed elements for a political framework aimed at achieving a lasting solution to the conflict.

A high-level United Nations team will travel to Nepal next week to discuss proposed UN assistance for the peace process, after Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today that recent developments have provided an “unprecedented opportunity” to achieve a negotiated solution to the 10 years of conflict in the Himalayan kingdom.