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Wrapping up a mission to Pakistan that included time in the country’s tribal region, where the protracted suffering of the displaced is “heart-wrenching,” a senior United Nations humanitarian official today stressed the need for more support to millions of people affected by insecurity, natural disasters and chronic malnutrition in the country.

The head of the Joint Mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations (OPCW-UN) today called for safe and unfettered access to the remaining eight per cent of Syria’s chemical weapons material that needs to be removed and destroyed.

Gross human rights abuses have been committed by both sides in the brutal conflict that erupted in South Sudan at the end of last year, including rapes, mass killings and torture, and, according to a new United Nations report released today, civilians were not only caught up in the violence, they were directly targeted, often along ethnic lines.

The Security Council today decided to create “the Captain Mbaye Diagne Medal for Exceptional Courage” in honour of a United Nations peacekeeper credited with saving hundreds of, perhaps even a thousand, Rwandans from death during the 1994 genocide.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has congratulated the people and Government of South Africa on the peaceful holding of parliamentary and provincial elections, amid reports of high voter turnout.

Despite a narrowing disparity in access to cleaner water and better sanitation between rural and urban areas, sharp inequalities still persist around the world, says a new United Nations report.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today voiced his deep concern at the fate of the recently kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria during a phone call with the country’s President, Goodluck Jonathan, who has accepted the United Nations chief’s offer to send a high-level envoy to discuss how the world body can support the Government tackle internal challenges.

Many of the world’s cities are “enveloped in dirty air” that is dangerous breathe, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said today, warning that urban dwellers are being exposed to excessive air pollution and are at a risk of respiratory diseases and other long-term health problems.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s top envoy on children and armed conflict expressed deep concern about the fate of the 230 girls violently abducted from their school in in mid-April by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria’s crisis-riven Borno State, and deplored the group’s reported abduction yesterday of several more girls.

United Nations’ development efforts got a boost today with the appointment of key positions in the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and at the UN Development Programme (UNDP).