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/ 19 February 2007
Globalisation has left world employment mostly intact, despite gloomy economic forecasts predicting hefty job losses, according to a study published on Monday. The study challenges the ”race-to-the-bottom view” that growing world trade would bring in terms of wages and the quality of employment.
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/ 14 February 2007
United Nations human rights investigators on Wednesday called off a visit to Darfur after Sudanese officials demanded the removal of the UN’s former top rights official from the group. The six-member team, set up last December by the UN Human Rights Council, said it would pursue its work without entering the country.
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/ 9 February 2007
A United Nations mission to investigate human rights abuse in Sudan’s Darfur region, which hopes to head for the region on Saturday, is still negotiating entry visas, mission head Jody Williams said on Friday. The Nobel peace laureate would not comment on reports that Sudan objects to some members of the team.
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/ 5 February 2007
Television images beamed around the globe from the World Economic Forum in late January showed Davos covered by a blanket of snow that also shrouded growing concern in this and other Swiss mountain resorts. The much-wanted powder came suddenly, in the space of a couple of days, ending an extremely mild first half of winter.
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/ 25 January 2007
Developing countries stand to suffer the worst effects of global warming, and should not have to pay for a problem created mainly by the rich, executives and experts said on Thursday. At a gathering of 2Â 400 of the world’s most powerful people at Davos, leaders from emerging nations said they wanted the United States, European Union and others in the West to be more accountable.
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/ 25 January 2007
Strong global economic growth is failing to reduce unemployment worldwide and has done little to cut the number of ”working poor” who earn less than a day, the International Labour Organisation said on Thursday. Even though more people were employed than ever before, the number of new jobs created failed to match the rise in global population.
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/ 16 January 2007
Millions of children remain at risk from HIV/Aids and the world’s response to their plight remains ”tragically insufficient”, a United Nations report said on Tuesday. The report by UNAids, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organisation was released on the first anniversary of the ”Unite for Children, Unite against Aids” programme.
Chinese bird flu expert Margaret Chan took over as head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday, promising to put Africa and women at the top of her agenda. Chan, the first Chinese to head a United Nations’ agency, was chosen as director general of the 192-state world health body last November in an election prompted by the death in office of her predecessor.
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/ 13 December 2006
The United Nations new human rights watchdog agreed on Wednesday to send a high-level mission to Sudan’s Darfur to probe allegations of worsening abuses against the civilian population. The 47-state Human Rights Council approved a consensus proposal leaving the naming of the five ”highly qualified” team members up to the council chairperson.
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/ 12 December 2006
The United Nations Human Rights Council must "lose no time" in sending a team of investigators to Sudan’s Darfur region, UN chief Kofi Annan urged an emergency meeting of the global rights body on Tuesday. "It is urgent that we take action to prevent further violations, including by bringing to account those responsible," Annan said.
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/ 12 December 2006
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Monday sharply criticised Israel’s failure to cooperate with a United Nations human rights fact-finding mission into the killing of 19 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Tutu confirmed that Israeli authorities had effectively thwarted the mission by failing to grant travel visas in time.
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/ 11 December 2006
Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu said on Monday that he ”would never be able to gloat” over the death of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died on Sunday without ever facing justice for the torture and killings that took place during his 1973 to 1990 regime. Tutu, who was speaking to reporters in Geneva, said he ”would want to send condolences to the family of General Pinochet”.
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/ 11 December 2006
A United Nations mission to be led by South Africa’s Desmond Tutu to probe last month’s deaths of 19 civilians in Gaza under Israeli shelling has been called off because Israel did not authorise the trip, a spokesperson said on Monday. The Nobel Peace laureate had other engagements and could not wait any longer for Israeli permission, she added.
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/ 9 December 2006
A United Nations fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip that was to be led by Desmond Tutu is in doubt because Israel has yet to give the Nobel laureate permission to enter the territory. Tutu was to begin leading a six-member team this weekend in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun to investigate the killings of 19 civilians in an Israeli artillery barrage last month.
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/ 5 December 2006
The United Nation’s top human rights forum will hold a special session on violations in Sudan’s strife-torn region of Darfur on December 12, the world body announced on Tuesday. European and African states in the UN Human Rights Council last week joined forces to call the urgent session, but a date for the session had yet to be set.
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/ 29 November 2006
Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has been named to head a United Nations fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, where 19 civilians were killed by an Israeli artillery barrage earlier this month, UN officials said on Wednesday. Tutu will travel to Gaza to ”assess the situation of victims”, according to the president of the UN Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba.
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/ 29 November 2006
The international community has failed Darfur, allowing the situation to deteriorate into ”a really dangerous regional crisis”, Jan Egeland, the United Nations coordinator for humanitarian affairs, said on Wednesday. At his final press conference before leaving office, he said: ”We all failed to help when there was still time in 2004. The world woke up too late.”
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/ 28 November 2006
Tobacco-related diseases including cancers and heart disease will kill 6,4-million people a year by 2015, 50% more than than HIV/Aids, a study said on Tuesday. But the HIV/Aids epidemic will be the leading cause of illness and disability in low- and middle-income countries by then and take an increasing number of lives worldwide, it said.
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/ 21 November 2006
HIV infection is rising in every region of the world and most worryingly in countries such as Uganda and Thailand, which had been heralded as success stories in the fight against Aids, the United Nations said on Tuesday while praising South Africa’s recent pledge to do better against the disease.
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/ 20 November 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called on Monday for stronger efforts to protect the world against biological weapons, which he said pose a growing threat due to advances in science and technology. Annan told the Convention on Biological Weapons that awareness of the dangers had been heightened by the twin global focus on terrorism and natural diseases.
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/ 20 November 2006
Africa will never climb out of poverty unless devastating health challenges such as a ”silent epidemic” of maternal and child death are tackled, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a report released on Monday. Some of the biggest health problems Africans face are worsening despite attempts to reverse them, the African Regional Health report said.
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/ 14 November 2006
Drug prices have increased in the past five years despite a commitment by the World Trade Organisation’s 149 members to make them more accessible to the world’s poor, Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Tuesday. MSF said that newer HIV medicines can cost up to 50 times more than the cheapest first-line treatments.
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/ 7 November 2006
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Tuesday formally approved communist Vietnam’s membership of the global free-trade system, opening up a new era of international commerce and investment for one of East Asia’s fastest-growing economies. The decision brought 12 years of negotiations to a successful conclusion.
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/ 11 October 2006
About 153-million poor people with vision problems have no access to basic eye care, causing missed educational and work opportunities, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday. The United Nations agency said a sight test and glasses or contact lenses could improve children’s prospects at school and their parents’ job successes across the developing world.
The United Nations human rights chief said on Monday ”several hundred” civilians — far more than first thought — may have died in late August attacks by militias in the south of Sudan’s violent Darfur region. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Louise Arbour, said the attacks appeared to have been carried out with the ”knowledge and material support” of the government.
More than 2Â 000 Somalis have fled across the border to Kenya over the last two days amid reports of advances by Islamist forces on several Juba Valley towns, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. About 30Â 000 people from Somalia have sought refuge in Kenya since the beginning of this year.
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/ 29 September 2006
A deadly epidemic feared to be pneumonic plague has broken out in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. There are dozens of suspect cases and up to 20 deaths in the outbreak, which a WHO team is investigating along with health ministry officials, WHO plague expert Eric Bertherat said.
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/ 8 September 2006
Sudan’s conflict-ridden Darfur region faces a humanitarian ”catastrophe” without rapid action to improve security and let aid flow to those in need, the head of the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. The warning by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres followed a similar cry of alarm by top UN humanitarian official Jan Egeland last month.
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/ 5 September 2006
A diarrhoea outbreak in Ethiopia has infected at least 15Â 000 people and killed 148, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that aid workers fear the epidemic, which has been stoked by heavy flooding, could spread even further.
A peace deal signed three months ago between Sudan’s government and the main rebel group in Darfur has failed to halt violence in the region, the United Nations said on Wednesday, citing an increase in rape and continued attacks by militias and rebel factions.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged half a billion dollars to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, the fund announced on Wednesday. The promise came in the run-up to the 16th International Aids Conference, opening in the Canadian city of Toronto on Sunday.
The BMW Sauber Formula One team on Monday announced they had released former world champion Canadian Jacques Villeneuve from his contract. Villeneuve did not take part in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix after informing the team that he had not fully recovered from an accident in Germany the previous weekend.