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The top United Nations political official today voiced the Organization’s “unwavering commitment” in helping Ukraine address the range of political, humanitarian, security and development challenges it continues to face amid ongoing fighting in the country’s east.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he will leave today for the countries hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak “to show my solidarity with those affected and urge even greater global action” to fight the epidemic, which two United Nations food agencies said could push the number of people facing food insecurity to more than one million by next spring.

The United Nations Security Council has today renewed for 12 months the use of routes across conflict lines and several border crossings in Syria so that humanitarian assistance can reach communities in need, as it expressed outrage at the escalating violence that has killed nearly 200,000 people.

A sweet new partnership between the United Nations, the Colombian and Austrian Governments and a renowned chocolate manufacturer is slated to bring free-trade practices and a critical source of income to Colombian farmers who have long relied on revenues from illicit drug crops, the Organization’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has announced.

International donors have pledged $418.6 million for a United Nations fund aimed at enabling the speedy delivery of humanitarian aid into the epicentres of crisis zones around the world, falling short of a broader appeal made by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Organization’s top relief official.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said today that it is encouraged by the positive response it has received to its invitation for a UN-convened Libyan political dialogue.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the “very important step” taken by the leaders of the United States and Cuba towards normalizing relations between the two countries.

After a year of “discord, disease and disruption” that saw peace operations, diplomacy and humanitarian capacities “pushed to the limit” responding to West Africa's Ebola outbreak, terrorist groups and ongoing conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed reporters today at United Nations Headquarters, where he summed up the year and looked ahead to 2015.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, today urged the World Bank to recognize the central importance of human rights to its draft environmental and social policies, also known as safeguard policies, which apply to its investment project financing.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has deplored the killing of at least 15 school girls in a car bombing in Yemen adding to the grim toll of what it described as “a dark day in the closing weeks of a bleak year” for children around the world.