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Faced with the risk of mounting piracy off the coast of Somalia at a time when it is increasing its shipments to feed over a million hungry people in the strife-torn country, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed France’s offer to provide naval escorts to protect its vessels.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is hosting three days of annual talks at its Geneva headquarters with some 200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who play a vital role as partners in helping it to meet the needs of millions of uprooted people around the world.

The forces that committed genocide in Rwanda more than a decade ago remain active in the region and must be countered with international action, the country’s President told the United Nations General Assembly today.

The emergence of new players in the global market and shifts in the policies of gas and oil producers means that traditional conglomerates from industrialized nations are facing increasing competition in the race to access the world’s reserves, the United Nations agency on trade and development issues said today.

Highlighting efforts at the local level to combat global warming, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today awarded a major prize to two non-governmental initiatives in South Africa and Bangladesh that are veterans in the front line against climate change.

From helicopters in East Africa to boats in the West, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is using every means at its disposal to reach the estimated 1.5 million people engulfed by the worst floods in decades but it urgently needs new donations to cope with the crisis.

The United Nations refugee agency has launched a campaign to raise $220 million by 2010 to allow 9 million refugee and vulnerable children, particularly those from Sudan’s Darfur region, Iraq and Colombia, to get an education, partly based on the Internet as well as by getting teachers into remote locations.

The Appeals Chamber of the United Nations tribunal established to try those responsible for the worst war crimes committed in the Balkans in the 1990s today upheld the Trial Chamber’s conviction of one former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) member and acquittal of two others.

With only about 14,000 of the world’s estimated 170,000 community e-centres in Asia and the Pacific, the United Nations opened a two-day meeting today on establishing a regional knowledge network of the centres where people in the poorest and remotest areas, from farmers to students, gain access to computers and the Internet.

Addressing the largest bloc of developing countries at the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for substantial efforts to avoid a worldwide economic recession, warning that the group’s members are likely to be the worst affected by any global slowdown.