UN News Centre

The first-ever United Nations World Data Forum is set to kick off in Cape Town, South Africa, on 15 January 2017, with the aim of increasing political and resource support for statistical capacity building worldwide.

Noting that the number of children arriving in Italy by themselves via the sea in 2016 more than doubled over the previous year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today called for urgent and special measures to protect them from trafficking, exploitation and abuse.

Speaking in Geneva a day after the start of a United Nations-supported Conference on Cyprus, a UN advisor said the open and frank exchanges at the meeting’s opening confirmed two things: “first that there are difficult issues to overcome; and second that there is a will to overcome them.”

The first-ever United Nations World Data Forum is set to kick off in Cape Town, South Africa, on 15 January 2017, with the aim of increasing political and resource support for statistical capacity building worldwide.

The Government of the Central African Republic (CAR) and the United Nations humanitarian country team today launched the nearly $400 million response plan for the 2017-2019 period to meet the basic needs of 2.2 million Central Africans.

Briefing the Security Council on the situation in West Africa and the Sahel region, a senior United Nations official cited a “rising tide of democracy” throughout the continent, noting that a number of countries had recently held elections which largely complied with electoral norms and standards, upholding their status a model in the region and beyond.

The health, hygiene and protection needs of women and girls displaced in Aleppo are staggering, the United Nations has observed, voicing concern for civilians in the Syrian city that has endured intense fighting for about four years.

Since the start of the Iraqi military operation to retake Mosul in October last year, more than 144,500 people have been displaced and a majority of them are in desperate need of live-saving humanitarian assistance, the United Nations migration agency has warned.

A simple bowl of food in Malawi is much more expensive than that same meal in Davos, Switzerland, once adjustments have been made to take into account one’s average daily income, research by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has revealed.

The heads of national space agencies, government officials and representatives from the space community worldwide are being challenged to get more women into the aerospace industry.

The United Nations refugee agency is urging European authorities to step up support and security for refugees migrants facing harsh winter conditions, particularly amid reports that people have frozen trying to enter or move across Europe.

The top United Nations human rights official today called on business leaders gathering at the World Economic Forum&#39s annual meeting in the Swiss town of Davos next week to use their considerable influence to stand up for human rights and prevent rights violations in countries where they operate.

A United Nations-supported conference on Cyprus opened in Geneva today, bringing together the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot leaders in a dialogue chaired by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) released its 2017 World Employment and Social Outlook report today, which finds economic growth trends lagging behind employment needs and predicts both rising unemployment and worsening social inequality throughout 2017.

While the ceasefire in Syria is largely holding, the United Nations envoy for the country cautioned today that the truce may be under threat as clashes in villages in the Wadi Barada valley have damaged water infrastructure and left more than five million people in and around Damascus facing water shortages.

Armed fighting over land, water and other natural resources in Sudan&#39s Darfur region continues to put civilians at risk, the top United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council today, calling for long-term solutions that would allow 2.6 million displaced people to return or resettle.

Briefing the Security Council today, senior United Nations officials underlined the significant challenges and deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Lake Chad Basin region, including in particular those posed by the militant group, Boko Haram, and urged for sustained support to national and regional security, political and humanitarian action.

Amid a global shortage of injectable inactivated polio vaccines (IPV), a new inoculation regimen, employed by governments in the South-East Asian region, involving two fractional vaccine doses &#8211 each about a fifth of a full dose &#8211 provides the same level of protection against all polioviruses as does one full dose, the United Nations health agency said today.

Data from 2016 reveals that for the fifth year in a row, the prices of food around the world have declined, in some cases 1.5 per cent below 2015 levels, a monthly United Nations report revealed.

A United Nations-supported mass vaccination campaign is set to start tomorrow to protect more than 4.7 million children against a measles outbreak in conflict-affected states in north-eastern Nigeria.