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Côte d'Ivoire’s political leaders are to be commended for their commitment to a peace agreement reached last year, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, calling on the sides to continue their efforts to cement the pact.

While Nepal’s interim Government has requested that the United Nations continue its presence there – albeit in a smaller form – to help the South Asian nation consolidate its hard-won peace, the world body is seeking clarification on the scope of any future support, according to a new report made public today.

Comments by the Permanent Representative of Zimbabwe questioning Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's impartiality toward events in the Southern African nation are “highly inappropriate and unacceptable,” the spokesperson for the United Nations chief has stated.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has emphasized to Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir the independence of the International Criminal Court, amid reports that ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is preparing to seek an indictment against the African Head of State.

The United Nations refugee agency has called on South Africa to stop deporting Zimbabweans, noting that an increasing number of them are arriving as a result of political violence in their homeland.

Family planning is a critical element to improving maternal health, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or global targets world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015, senior United Nations officials said today, urging that women everywhere have access to this vital service.

Close to 400 Lao Hmong people were repatriated to Laos from a camp in northern Thailand yesterday, bringing the total number of returnees to 1,228 in the past three weeks, the United Nations refugee agency said today.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency has successfully carried out a simulated accident at Mexico’s Laguna Verde nuclear power plant, intended to test national and international emergency response systems should an actual incident occur.

Dragoljub Ojdanic, the former Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, has been granted temporary provisional release on compassionate grounds by the United Nations tribunal set up to deal with the worst war crimes committed during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.

Government forces and rebel groups continue to commit human rights violations in the Darfur region of Sudan, while populations in the southern part of the country also suffer from ongoing violence, according to an independent United Nations rights official.