Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today pledged the full support of the United Nations to ensure that Afghanistan’s presidential election run-off is as credible as possible and welcomed President Hamid Karzai’s acceptance of a second round of voting.

A sharp rise in attacks on humanitarian workers in the eastern North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has impeded efforts to provide life-saving assistance to hundreds of thousands of people in need.

Finding shelter tops the list of priorities for emergency relief agencies scrambling to help hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia devastated by last month’s powerful earthquake off the coast of the island of Sumatra, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

A new United Nations report calls for the lifting of restrictions and costly fees imposed on the $40 billion that migrant workers send home to Africa each year, the world body’s agency tasked with eradicating rural poverty said today.

A new and free way to monitor the size and health of forests through satellite data and help curb greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation has been launched by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and its partners.

As civilians continue to flee South Waziristan amid Pakistani military operations against insurgents, the United Nations refugee agency is stressing the need to ensure that assistance can reach the displaced.

Nearly 30,000 Angolans recently expelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who are now seeking refuge in overcrowded camps in northern Angola, are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today welcomed additional support that will enable thousands of children in Timor-Leste to receive meals while attending school.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has praised a humanitarian organization committed to eradicating landmines worldwide for its efforts to turn minefields into agricultural land in Afghanistan.

High-level delegates from 22 countries are taking part in a United Nations-backed three-day Arab Employment Forum in Beirut to consider ways of sustaining jobs and extending social protection in the face of the global economic crisis.

United Nations agencies and their partners are providing assistance in north-west Pakistan, where the Government estimates that over 100,000 people have already been displaced by the latest military offensive against militants and the number could rise even further.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) today began a hearing into whether to confirm war crimes charges against a rebel leader accused of having directed the deadly September 2007 attack against peacekeepers in the war-ravaged Sudanese region of Darfur.