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Nearly 1,600 Colombians who fled to Ecuador over the past week after an outbreak of violence have started returning home although the situation remains tense throughout the area, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

Initial reviews indicate that countries will meet criteria to implement an essential tool in efforts to reduce global warming gases with a trading mechanism that allows States which cut emissions below treaty targets to sell their surplus allowances to others who overshoot the mark, the United Nations body overseeing the project reported today.

With Palestinians going through “one of the most dramatic and difficult periods of their troubled history,” microcredit can play a vital role for survival and recovery in the occupied territory, a senior United Nations official said today.

Highlighting the unprecedented global demand for United Nations peacekeepers in general and police officers in particular, the new UN Police (UNPOL) chief today stressed the importance of Member States and international policing organizations co-operating ever more closely with the world body to face the challenges of Darfur and other missions worldwide.

Condemning the murder of a radio journalist in Somalia, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today called for urgent measures to halt attacks on media professionals in the country.

The United Nations refugee agency is working with its partners to help more than 1,500 Colombians who have fled an outbreak of violence in their home areas and sought safety in Ecuador over the past week – the latest influx in a years-long exodus that has sent some 250,000 Colombians fleeing to their southern neighbour.

Marking the International Day of the Disappeared, a United Nations working group voiced concern over the increasing number of enforced disappearances worldwide and reaffirmed its solidarity with victims and human rights defenders working on their behalf.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is providing life-saving assistance to thousands of victims of a cholera outbreak in northern Iraq, as local authorities and their partners try to limit the spread of the infectious and often fatal water-borne disease.

The top United Nations envoy to Nepal today called for a halt to violence and threats of communal attacks to ensure a “good climate” for the Constituent Assembly elections scheduled for later this year in the Himalayan nation.

United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq archiving their headquarters in New York have discovered vials that may contain a potentially deadly chemical removed from an Iraqi facility 11 years ago, but they said today that the containers are properly secured and pose no immediate threat to the public.