Bearing a message from the Russian who invented the world’s most common assault rifle, activists will press governments at a United Nations conference on small arms to ensure such weapons are not used to trample human rights. The groups and some officials at the conference advocate a fundamentally new approach for trade in the light arms that are said to kill 1 000 people a day.
The top United Nations humanitarian official warned on Friday that relief efforts in Darfur could collapse within weeks unless the government makes good on a peace deal and donors fund aid work in the troubled Sudanese region. Jan Egeland, the top humanitarian aid official, told the UN Security Council that the government must lift restrictions on aid groups if they are to do their job properly.
Twelve years after the Rwanda genocide, nations still seem unwilling to commit the troops and money that would be needed to stop other mass slaughters of civilians, a top United Nations envoy said on Friday. Governments have repeatedly promised ”never again” in the years since the Holocaust and the 1994 Rwanda killings. They have gotten better at nurturing peace processes, but are still reluctant to do much more.
No image available
/ 23 December 2005
In a secret and secure location, a set of computers holds the hundreds of thousands of files that document how companies and individuals exploited the United Nations oil-for-food programme in league with Saddam Hussein. Yet, two months after the programme’s troubles were exposed, there has been no rush by the authorities in question to study the documents.
The former chief of the Iraq oil-for-food programme resigned on Sunday, a day before investigators release a report that is expected to accuse him of taking kickbacks. Benon Sevan accused United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan of failing to stand by him and blasted the independent inquiry committee investigating allegations of corruption.
The United Nations Security Council has condemned sex abuse by peacekeepers for the first time, after hearing from the head of an inquiry into abuse that member nations have ignored the problem for years. Jordan’s UN Ambassador Prince Zeid al Hussein said no nation in the history of UN peacekeeping was blameless.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s transitional government still has a long way to go before it will be ready to hold national elections, but a credible vote is possible and registration will begin next month, United Nations officials said. he DRC was supposed to hold elections on June 30 as part of a peace plan that ended a five-year war.
Far more people have died in Sudan’s ravaged Darfur region than the 70 000 reported since last year, and many of those deaths were from preventable causes like pneumonia and diarrhoea, the United Nations humanitarian chief said on Wednesday.
United Nations peacekeeping officials sought more power to conduct aerial surveillance and electronic warfare against militia who have stepped up attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s lawless Ituri region. The officials’ request, which they said on Thursday would help prevent weapons from pouring into the eastern region, came days after peacekeepers killed up to 60 people.