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Victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), especially in remote areas of the vast country, need greater support, a high-level panel convened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to hear directly from the survivors said today.

The Security Council today extended the mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan for another year, calling on Governments to increase its current strength of 120,000 troops to counter growing terrorism by the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

United Nations officials have called on industrialized countries to live up to their multi-billion dollar pledges to help the developing world adapt to climate change at a week-long meeting of several hundred African experts, including Government ministers, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today outlined measures to strengthen the United Nations role in helping countries emerging from conflict to maintain peace and entrench stability, stressing the need for rapid deployment of trained staff, predictable financing, partnerships and ensuring the participation of women.

The head of a United Nations monitoring committee today called on Somalia and the United States, the only two countries not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to do so immediately.

Just two weeks after having been appointed as the new United Nations Special Envoy for Assistance to Pakistan, Rauf Engin Soysal is on the ground to assess the impact of the deadly floods, cautioning that the bulk of the rebuilding effort is still ahead.

A senior official with the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur today met with leaders of a restive camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the war-torn Sudanese region.

A Pakistani general with previous experience serving with United Nations operations in Cambodia has been named the world body’s new force commander in Liberia, succeeding a fellow-countryman at the head of the nearly 10,000-strong uniformed component of the peacekeeping mission there.

Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro will give a keynote address on Friday in Nairobi, Kenya, at the African Union (AU) forum on the ‘Launch of the African Women’s Decade,’ which seeks to accelerate implementation of agreed global and regional commitments.

A member of the Group of Eminent Persons appointed by Secretary-General Ban K-moon to look into development problems facing the world’s poorest countries today stressed that both developed and developing countries must fulfil their commitments to poverty reduction strategies for the efforts to bear fruit.