EU leaders threaten Sudan with sanctions if it does not cooperate fully with the International Criminal Court by handing over war-crimes suspects.
The UN has so far found 89 bodies in the disputed oil-rich Abyei region of Sudan from fighting that erupted last month, a UN official said on Monday.
A nuclear deal proposed by the major powers appeared on Sunday to have widened rifts among Iran’s ruling conservatives.
The spread of HIV in Mozambique has hit the economy and is heightening poverty, the United Nations chief representative in the country said on Friday.
The United Nations is not about to take any drastic steps to move refugees from xenophobic attacks to other countries, reports Imke van Hoorn.
The current climate in Zimbabwe was ”not at all” the proper one for an election, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday said it was cutting back its humanitarian air services in Sudan due to a -million funding shortfall.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday hailed the deal reached by Sudan and southern former rebels to end a dispute over the flashpoint oil-rich region of Abyei.
The United States and European Union plan a joint call for United Nations monitors to be sent to Zimbabwe after a human rights group alleged systematic government murder and brutality.
United Nations inspectors set to examine a Syrian site for signs of a secret nuclear reactor project may find little in part because of tardy intelligence-sharing by Washington.
A United Nations-led peace initiative for Somalia appears to have failed, with government and opposition delegations refusing to meet face-to-face in Djibouti to try to end 18 years of conflict.
The United Nations has systematically exaggerated the scale of the Aids pandemic and the risk of the HIV virus affecting heterosexuals, says Professor James Chin, a former senior Aids official with the World Health Organisation.
A United Nations global food crisis summit risked embarrassing failure to reach any formal agreement on combating hunger threatening a billion people worldwide.
United Nations peacekeepers are protecting a camp of civilians forced to flee fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A United Nations summit on the global food crisis asked rich nations on Wednesday to help ”revolutionise” farming in Africa to produce more food for people facing hunger.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Wednesday that failure was not an option in addressing the global food price crisis, and said an extra -billion to -billion per year would be needed to help avoid disaster.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is to send up to 400 observers to this month’s run-off poll in Zimbabwe, double the number who oversaw the first round.
The aid group Care International said on Tuesday the Zimbabwean government has halted its operations in the country for allegedly campaigning for the opposition
The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court charges that ”the whole state apparatus” of Sudan is implicated in crimes against humanity in the Darfur region, linking the government directly with the feared janjaweed militia.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, whose 28-year rule has brought widespread hunger to his country, on Tuesday defended the seizure of land from white farmers, saying he is undoing a legacy of Zimbabwe’s former colonial masters. Mugabe spoke to world leaders at a United Nations summit on the global food crisis against a backdrop of sharp criticism over his participation.
Civil and human rights groups predicted more chaos after Zimbabwe’s presidential run-off takes place, saying on Tuesday they do not believe President Robert Mugabe will step down if he loses. However, it is ”critical” for the election to go ahead so a winner can emerge, said Gorden Moyo, from Bulawayo Agenda.
South Sudanese officials accused the government on Tuesday of reinforcing troops in the disputed oil town of Abyei, raising tensions as United Nations Security Council envoys flew in to shore up a peace deal. Clashes in Abyei last month increased fears of a return to war between the northern government and the south.
The United Nations urged a summit on the global food crisis on Tuesday to help stop the spread of starvation threatening nearly one billion people by lowering trade barriers and removing export bans. ”Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders.
Foreign aid groups pressed Burma on Tuesday to stop closing cyclone relief camps as international experts kicked off a mission to pin down the scale of the devastation a month after the storm. Cyclone Nargis is officially thought to have left 134 000 people dead or missing and 2,4-million destitute.
Britain is ”reviewing” Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s honorary knighthood, a government spokesperson said on Monday, amid reports that the first steps had been taken to revoke the title. On Monday, Channel 4 News television reported, without citing its sources, that the first steps had been taken to strip Mugabe of the knighthood.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe made a surprise appearance on Monday at a world food summit in Rome, drawing fierce criticism from the British government. In his first official trip abroad since elections in March, Mugabe attended the summit organised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
World leaders gathered in Rome on Tuesday for a United Nations summit on food security as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged "hard decisions" and heavy investment in agriculture. "For years, falling food prices and rising production lulled the world into complacency," Ban said, adding: "Governments put off hard decisions."
The Johannesburg High Court has granted an urgent interdict preventing the relocation of foreigners displaced by xenophobic attacks who are being accommodated at the city’s Cleveland and Jeppe police stations, Lawyers for Human Rights said on Monday.
Britain criticised as obscene the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at this week’s global food summit in Rome, saying he had inflicted shortages on millions of his own people by his ”profound misrule”. Mugabe flew into Rome late on Sunday, making his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western leaders as fraudulent.
There were a few tense moments on Monday when a crowd of several hundred refugees marched to Parliament to air their grievances over the recent xenophobic violence. After being addressed by, among others, Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign, sections of the crowd surged towards a small line of police officers outside the main gates of Parliament.
The rise of biofuels is not only adding to the global food price crisis but also poses a risk for peasants, pushed off their land to make way for energy crops, a report prepared for this week’s food summit said. The use of food such as maize, palm oil and sugar to produce fuel has been blamed in part for record high commodity prices.
Shortages of bread in Zimbabwe are expected to worsen after preparations for the country’s winter wheat crop failed, state media said on Monday. The state-controlled daily Herald said that farmers planted 8 963 hectares of wheat this winter, only 13% of a government target of 70 000 hectares.