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Opium production in Afghanistan, a $3-billion-a-year trade accounting for more than 90 per cent of the world’s illegal output, could rise again this year after a nearly 60 per cent increase in 2006, due to the ousted Taliban using the trade in the raw material for heroin to fund their war, according to a new United Nations survey released today.

Praising Arab states for their traditional generosity toward displaced people, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR) António Guterres has urged them to take a more active role in his agency’s work and called for international solidarity in easing the plight of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fleeing conflict in their homeland.

Welcoming the signing of an agreement between rival leaders in Côte d’Ivoire, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the parties to implement “in full and in good faith” the accord in the West African country that has been divided between the Government-controlled south and the rebel-held north since 2002.

Giving a modern twist to the biblical injunction to beat swords into ploughshares, the United Nations is urging Liberians to replace mortars with footballs in an innovative Sports for Peace programme to promote reconciliation and development in the formerly strife-torn West African country.

The top United Nations envoy on children and armed conflict is currently on a six-day mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to ensure greater protection for youngsters in the immediate post-conflict phase and peace consolidation process as the vast country emerges from years of civil war and factional fighting.

United Nations officials today called for increased efforts – by Governments, civil society, law enforcement agencies, the private sector and international organizations including the UN – to curb human trafficking, especially in women and girls.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) today called for calm after yesterday’s suicide bombing and shooting on a highway in the east of the country in which civilians are reported to have been killed and injured after a United States convoy was ambushed.

With some 1.4 million people suffering from health care-associated infections at any given time, United Nations health officials are urging Latin America and Caribbean countries to join a global effort to improve hand hygiene and related practices in hospitals and care facilities to help reduce the growing number of deaths and illnesses.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special advisor on efforts to consolidate peace and pursue political, economic and social development in Iraq met with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah over the weekend for talks that focused on a range of regional issues as well as the country’s relations with the United Nations.

Bahrain’s Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa today won a United Nations award for his efforts in improving the lot of the urban poor.