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After a week of intensive discussions and six weeks of preparation, a draft international agreement on access to the Earth’s genetic resources and the fair and equitable share in benefits from their use has been finalized at a United Nations meeting in Cali, Colombia.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will head to Central Asia on Wednesday for a five-nation trip that will focus on boosting regional cooperation, disarmament, the environment and continuing efforts to attain the social and economic targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The National Police of Timor-Leste (PNTL), which was set up by the United Nations in the wake of the country's vote for independence, has celebrated its 10th anniversary, making it one of the oldest institutions in the fledgling South-East Asian nation.

The process of ratifying the vote count in this month’s Iraqi parliamentary elections is entirely a national responsibility, the senior United Nations official in the country said today, stressing that the UN’s role is only to advise election authorities when requested.

The “smart” rebuilding of Haiti after January’s earthquake will require some $11.5 billion of spending over the next 10 years, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today ahead of Wednesday’s international donor meeting on the way ahead for the Caribbean country.

Women continue to bear disproportionate responsibility for often unappreciated care-giving work in households and communities, despite significant progress in gender equality and women empowerment during the past 15 years, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro has said.

The United Nations agency tasked with fighting the spread of HIV has supported a call made by the world’s parliamentarians to lift travel restrictions for people living with the disease.

Security Council members and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned this morning’s twin suicide bombings in the Moscow subway system that have killed dozens of people and injured scores more.

The United Nations has allocated $3.7 million in emergency funding to support UN agencies in Mongolia as they try to assist more than half a million people suffering from the combined effects of a long, severe winter and a preceding harsh summer drought.

The United Nations-supported mine action centre in Afghanistan destroyed nearly 112,000 different types of explosives in the first two months of this year and could do much more with additional funding, one of its top officials said today ahead of next week’s International Mine Action Day.