The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday unveiled a new partnership with internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees launched its new service using the "Google Earth Outreach" programme.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) ousted a record number of cybersquatters from websites with domain names referring to trademarked companies, foundations and celebrities in 2007. Wipo, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, received 2 156 complaints alleging "abusive registration of trademarks on the internet" last year.
fireman was found guilty of arson and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years behind bars on Friday after being convicted of starting 20 blazes across northern Switzerland. The 31-year-old farmer even set his own property alight, with total damage from his spree during 2002/04 running to several million Swiss francs (one Swiss franc equals $1).
A World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediator issued new proposals on Monday for opening up services such as telecoms and banking as part of a global trade deal. But the new text, replacing a previous document issued in February, did not set dates for revised offers or final commitments in the services negotiations.
The World Health Organisation's 193 member states on Saturday overcame their deep divisions over intellectual property rules and endorsed a strategy to help improve developing-country access to drugs and medical tests.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday appealed to governments to do more to save Africa from disease. "We cannot lose Africa," Tutu told the 193-nation World Health Assembly. "The cradle of humankind" is threatened by "disease, conflict and destruction".
Insufficient food, climate change and pandemic flu are global crises that could unravel progress in public health, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) director general said on Monday. "These three critical events, these clear threats to international security, have the potential to undo much hard-won progress in public health," WHO director general Margaret Chan said.
The five major nuclear-armed powers said on Friday the Non-Proliferation Treaty was under threat and cited Iran's uranium enrichment campaign in a rare joint call for action to shore up the NPT. Iran says it wants only electricity from enrichment, which can also produce atom bomb fuel if the process is adjusted.
The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world's food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday. The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights.
Diplomats failed to agree on Friday on a follow-up meeting to an acrimonious 2001 conference on racism after two weeks of difficult negotiations between Western and Islamic countries. The meeting was unable to decide on the venue or duration of a conference to chart progress in the fight against racism since the landmark conference in Durban seven years ago.
The United Nations agency charged with relieving world hunger on Friday made an appeal for $256-million more in funds to cope with sharp rises in food prices. The World Food Programme request came on top of another "extraordinary emergency appeal" of $500-million made by the agency in March to top up its 2008 budget.
Climate change is now officially a human rights issue, as the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday passed a resolution on the subject, recognising that the world's poor are particularly vulnerable. The council also gave the green light for a study into the impact of climate change on human rights.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canadian jurist Louise Arbour, said on Friday she will step down when her current term in office expires on June 30. "It is very much for personal reasons. I'm not prepared to make this commitment for another four years," said Arbour in Geneva.
The United Nations World Food Programme on Friday said two relief flights will be sent to Burma on Saturday, just hours after suspending flights due to "unacceptable restrictions" by the government. Burma has maintained strict limits on foreign involvement in the relief effort, despite calls for it to allow unfettered access to experts.
Kenya's food crisis was set to worsen after a fungus wiped out 10% to 20% of its annual rice production, the United Nations said on Friday. The fungus destroyed 5 600ha of rice in the Mwea Irrigation Scheme in Central Province, known as the rice basket of the country, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) is concerned that rival armed groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are recruiting child soldiers again. Julien Harneis, a representative of Unicef, said more child soldiers have been recruited in the two eastern Kivu provinces in the last two months after a post-ceasefire lull.
The United Nations refugee agency on Friday launched a fresh appeal for $40,3-million to help more than 2,5-million displaced people in the Sudanese region of Darfur. "The funds will be used to help 2,5-million displaced Darfurians", UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Ron Redmond said.
Attacks on four villages in West Darfur in January and February by the Sudanese armed forces amounted to a "deliberate" military strategy. The attacks resulted in at least 115 deaths, according to a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN African Union Mission in Darfur.
The United Nations's top human rights official on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of the killing of opposition political activists in Zimbabwe. "It is hard to get a very precise picture of the full range of the violence, or the exact number of politically motivated extra-judicial killings," said Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The United Nations will close its human rights office in Angola after the authorities there withdrew their cooperation, the office of the high commissioner said on Friday. Angola has ordered the office to cease its operations by the end of May after pulling out of talks to establish a formal agreement to regulate the rights body's work in the country.
