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Less than a week after the Security Council lifted its sanctions on the export of “blood diamonds” from Liberia, the United Nations peacekeeping mission to the West African country today handed over a regional diamond certification office to the Government.

Representatives of United Nations Member States today urged the world body to keep using a wide array of media and languages to deliver its message of peace, development and rights to the peoples of the world, as the UN Committee on Information continued its 2007 debate at UN Headquarters in New York.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Government of Syria signed an agreement to provide the country – sheltering over one million Iraqi refugees – with $2.06 million to renovate hospitals, train medical staff and provide new medical equipment, including ambulances.

The first woman Prime Minister of Norway, the former President of Chile, and the President of the 56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly were today named Special Envoys for Climate Change by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made the issues one of his top priorities.

The high-level United Nations-backed body tasked with overseeing the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year reconstruction blueprint for the war-ravaged country, said today that since its inaugural meeting last year, the implementation of the plan – which aims to bolster security, economic development and counter-narcotics efforts – is on track.

The senior United Nations envoy to Nepal today said an announced postponement in Constituent Assembly elections planned for June should offer time to address critical concerns in the country, where a decade-long armed conflict that killed some 13,000 people came to a formal end when the parties signed a peace accord last November.

Graduates of a United Nations skills training programme in Liberia, where the world body is working to help consolidate stability as the country recovers from conflict, should use their training to become more self-reliant, the senior UN military official has said.

Welcoming the willingness of former rival parties to fully implement the peace deal in Côte d’Ivoire, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the West African country participated in a ceremony marking the official integration of former rebels into two brigades.

Twelve United Nations experts united to voice their deep concern today about the recent violence in the Somali capital Mogadishu, where hundreds of people have been killed in the latest clashes and hundreds of thousands forced to flee in recent months.

Delegates attending the United Nations Committee on Information meeting in New York today called for new measures to make the world body’s website more thoroughly multilingual.