Latest News

The United Nations office overseeing the humanitarian Oil-for-Food programme said today it had identified a further $60 million worth of supplies that can be shipped to Iraq within the 45-day timeline adopted last month by the Security Council, bringing the total to $454.6 million.

United Nations relief agencies reported a slow improvement today in the humanitarian situation in Iraq but there were still many areas for concern, with spokesmen describing the state of affairs as “precarious” and “tense.”

The former Presidents of the United Nations General Assembly have expressed their full support for the role Secretary-General Kofi Annan is playing in the present climate of international tension, according to a letter released today at UN Headquarters in New York.

Reacting to reports that a wave of reprisals against Arabs living in northern Iraq had swept the region last week, the top United Nations human rights official called for immediate action to protect the fundamental right of those populations to live free from fear and intimidation.

The United Nations today launched an $84 million appeal to support its efforts to address over the next 18 months the emergency needs of the most vulnerable in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog body told the Security Council today that the agency should restart its work in Iraq as quickly as possible and that it was waiting for new instructions for its return.

Top officials from the International Criminal Court (ICC) expressed the hope today that the horrors humanity had suffered during the past century would serve as a lesson, and that the existence of a permanent war crimes tribunal would help to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future.

The official in charge of the United Nations programme that is the only source of food for 60 per cent of Iraq's population today urged the Security Council to extend the authority of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to run it for another three weeks so that supplies already in the pipeline can be delivered.

In what it called a “disappointing outcome,” the United Nations Disarmament Commission has concluded its 2003 session without concrete proposals to advance either nuclear disarmament or confidence-building in the field of conventional arms.

United Nations relief agencies today praised the Iraqi doctors, nurses and support staff who have kept services running despite the destruction and looting, but they also underscored the enormity of the tasks ahead in repairing the national infrastructure and feeding the population.