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A United Nations-backed meeting focusing on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Asia and the Pacific kicked off today as international delegates, UN officials and Government ministers embarked on discussions over how to help the region’s poorest nations “graduate” to a higher level of development.

Response workers battling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa will receive “hazard pay” for the first time in Sierra Leone using mobile money because “unless there is a certain element of incentives, or danger pay, it’s very difficult to attract and retain people,” the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced today.

Despite an uneven global economic recovery, international patent requests continued to surge in 2013, extending the run of strong annual increases in intellectual property (IP) filings to a fourth consecutive year, a new United Nations study reported today.

Cooperation between the African Union and the United Nations on peace and security is crucial and should occur systematically at the earliest signs of crisis said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this morning as he uregd the Security Council to work more effectively to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts on the African continent.

Having raised $88 million in a 10-day global fundraising effort, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today said its funding for December 2014 was secure and the agency could resume providing food assistance through electronic vouchers to 1.7 million refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.

United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Hawa Bangura welcomed today the conviction of a senior army officer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for crimes against humanity, saying the verdict sends a “very clear message to perpetrators of sexual violence in DRC that they cannot hide behind a badge or evade justice with a uniform.”

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has announced its involvement in an international partnership to improve civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems in the Asia-Pacific region.

Higher education is a prerequisite for millions of youth in the developing world who hope to find a decent, “non-vulnerable” job, a new United Nations study has established.

In the Netherlands, assisting migrants living on the streets is not a matter of charity but rather an obligation of the Government, a group of United Nations human rights experts said today as they urged Dutch authorities to immediately provide irregular migrants with “bed, bath and bread”.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today strongly condemned the “blood-curdling attack” on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, which has cost the lives of at least 130 people, the vast majority of whom were children.