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While stressing Australia’s long-standing commitment to human rights, a top United Nations official today said the country is failing to protect certain groups and urged it to rethink its policies towards indigenous peoples and asylum-seekers.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of more than 100 countries to assist in “urgent global action” to combat the threat posed by climate change.

Visiting health workers in Ethiopia today, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spotlighted the progress made in improving the health of women and children, while also stressing the need to do more to avoid needless deaths.

Major fossil fuel exporting and importing nations in the Asia-Pacific, meeting at a United Nations forum, agreed today to enhance cooperation to promote energy self-reliance in a region where high food and oil prices threaten economic recovery.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today he was “deeply troubled” by continued violent clashes in Yemen, where a large-scale pro-democracy movement has been protesting against the Government since early this year.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged Somalia’s transitional federal institutions (TFIs) to demonstrate they are moving the country towards political stability and social-economic development, saying the Security Council and donors are losing patience with the tensions within the leadership.

While the Sudanese town of Abyei is now empty with its residents having fled the recent violence, the situation there remains tense, according to the United Nations, which called on both sides to cease their hostilities and return to negotiations.

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with preserving the world’s cultural heritage today endorsed recommendations to inscribe 45 new documents and documentary collections – ranging from Leo Tolstoy’s personal manuscripts to the collections of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the patent issued to Carl Benz for a gas-fuelled engine in 1886 – into a heritage register.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) appointed Jessica Watson of Australia, the youngest person to sail alone non-stop around the world, as the agency’s Youth Representative in support of the global fight against hunger.

The leader of the Serb Radical Party, on trial for alleged war crimes, has been charged with contempt of court by the United Nations tribunal for the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s for failing to remove from his website information on protected witnesses in his trial.