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The head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said today he hoped the leaders of the eight most industrialized countries meeting next week in Evian, France, would be discussing not whether to address the anti-poverty goals of the 2000 Millennium Summit and development, but how they could resolve them.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for renewed commitment to the plan for “South-South” cooperation, saying that the strategy remains highly relevant in addressing gross disparities in access to resources, income and other challenges facing developing countries.

Confronted with the rapid emergence and spread of the deadly new Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the United Nations World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual meeting today granted the agency additional powers to respond to new health threats, including on-the-spot investigations, enhanced communications and broader sources of reporting.

The 192-member United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today unanimously called for urgent action to stem the global public health impact of violence in view of its devastating effect on physical, mental and reproductive health and the vast amount of human and financial health resources required to respond to it.

The head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has lauded President George W. Bush of the United States for demonstrating “critical leadership” in the fight against AIDS through his signing into law a $15 billion bill to prevent and treat the scourge in Africa and the Caribbean.

The total value of priority items from the United Nations Oil-for-Food humanitarian pipeline that can be shipped to Iraq for emergency needs continues to climb, reaching $1.1 billion, the UN Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP) announced today.

United Nations relief agencies continued their rehabilitation efforts in Iraq today, ranging from garbage collection to vaccination campaigns to the possible revival of marshlands drained by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the appointment of a Japanese diplomat with wide experience in United Nations operations as the new chief of the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that 12.5 million Ethiopians are at risk of starving, as there is still a substantial shortfall to the agency's $90 million appeal for emergency operations in that country.

United Nations Legal Counsel Hans Corell is preparing to travel to Cambodia to finalize an agreement with the government on establishing special courts to try the former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, a UN spokesman said today.