Latest News

Donor countries have agreed to a more streamlined system of coordinating their efforts to fight the global AIDS epidemic, ensuring that recipient countries can use the funds for more efficient and effective programmes, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Welcoming a framework for talks to address problems in the Darfur region of western Sudan, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged the two sides to observe their ceasefire agreement and avoid attacks on civilians.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) continues to disarm and demobilize ex-fighters from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel group, collecting weapons over the weekend from about 270 former combatants.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today is sending the first members of an international team to help investigate the source of cases of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) recently reported in Beijing and the eastern province of Anhui, which have now doubled to eight, following a request of China’s Health Ministry.

While lauding the work of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the acting UN chief for human rights said since the body had puzzlingly excluded Iraq from its decisions on rights in armed conflicts, he would initiate the compilation of such a report.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today voiced hope that the standoff in the Iraqi city of Fallujah could be resolved without fighting, saying that it was tricky and dangerous to fight in a built-up area.

Four experts have been named to monitor the United Nations embargo prohibiting weapons flowing to militias in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and, if necessary, to nearby areas of other countries.

Although the United Nations suffered in 2003 rumblings about its fading into irrelevance largely from the debate surrounding the war in Iraq, there are signs that a year later the Organization is slowly regaining its indispensable role in global affairs, the UN's top information official said today.

With inadequate supplies of water already becoming a drag on development and a catalyst for international tensions, the equitable sharing of water resources is one of the most important challenges the world faces, according to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Too few developing countries have shared in benefits of international trade, but the 40-year International Trade Centre (ITC) has balanced the commercial demands of its business clients with developing country imperatives of poverty reduction and sustainable development, according to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.