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Noting that the enforced disappearance of people around the globe continues unabated and is even growing in some countries, the United Nations today marked International Day of the Disappeared with an appeal to all governments to take preventive action and end impunity for the responsible security forces and armed bands.

In his ongoing campaign to protect journalists as an essential pillar of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has condemned the murder of two more reporters, voicing outrage at the increased targeting of media professionals.

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Carol Bellamy is in Tibet to get a first hand look at the situation of youngsters in western China, a region that is struggling to catch up with the country’s strong economic growth.

With al-Qaida-related terrorism posing as great a threat as ever, the head of the United Nations committee monitoring sanctions against the group today called for "pressing on the accelerator a lot more" to strengthen steps to cut off financing and prevent the terrorists from obtaining a dirty bomb or other means of mass destruction.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan today named Maj.-Gen. Guido Palmieri of Italy as Chief Military Observer in the United Nations Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP).

As polling officials in Afghanistan began training today for the country's upcoming elections, the United Nations temporarily stopped road missions to Rodat District in Nangarhar province after a blast apparently targeted election workers there.

A convoy of trucks carrying the first consignment of emergency food aid across the Sahara desert for Sudanese refugees in Chad left the Libyan town of Al Kohfra today, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced.

A group of Congolese refugees in Burundi have moved away from the insecure border area near the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to a United Nations refugee agency camp deeper inside the Great Lakes country, a spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) said today.

Despite the repatriation today of 47 abducted Ugandan children from Sudan, the continued kidnapping of youngsters by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as soldiers and sex slaves remains a "cause for great distress," the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.

Forests in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have declined, rivers and urban air have become more polluted and major crop yields have fallen dramatically due to land degradation and natural disasters, according to the first-ever United Nations environmental study of the country, released today.