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In a further move to mitigate the impact of natural disasters, United Nations agencies today announced a new initiative to lower the risks involved through preparatory action as well as to spur recovery through speedy response.

A Japanese optometrist who has won the world’s top award for assisting refugees has pledged to pour the prize money back into the work that led to the honour – working with the United Nations refugee agency to help displaced vision-impaired people in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Starting a seven-nation mission to promote peace and reconciliation in Somalia, the top United Nations envoy for the war-torn east African country today visited neighbouring Ethiopia to discuss the next round of peace talks between the rival Somali factions.

United Nations police today began joint patrols with national and European security forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) capital, Kinshasa, in a crackdown on armed groups and unauthorized weapons ahead of presidential elections at the end of the month.

Welcoming the peaceful resolution of tensions resulting from the recent arrests of Russian officers in Georgia, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on all sides to come together and “engage constructively to address existing problems.”

The United Nations refugee agency expressed fresh concern today about the plight of an estimated 20,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq as deteriorating security forces an increasing number to try to flee the country.

With 500,000 Palestinian children out of school due to a strike in the West Bank that has left most public schools closed, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has set up youth clubs to provide extracurricular activities, safe indoor and outdoor play areas, and centres to provide literacy and computer training.

Guinea-Bissau has made some progress towards political reconciliation, but the West African country remains so poor and enduring tensions are still strong enough that the risk of a major setback is ever-present, less than a decade after the end of a bitter civil war, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a report issued today.

The Security Council will hold a formal vote on Monday morning to select a new Secretary-General of the United Nations to recommend to the General Assembly for approval, the Council’s President for the month of October said today.

Voicing concern about the stated intention of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to carry out a nuclear test in the future, Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned today that such a move would be counter-productive and worsen tensions in the region, and he called on the country’s leadership to maintain the current moratorium on testing.