LONDON – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for a coherent political strategy to assist Afghanistan in its quest for peace, security and development, noting that the country’s challenges cannot be overcome by military efforts alone.
“We must recognize that while security is a major element in the transition strategy, it must not be the main and [...]

NEW YORK – The first batch of thousands of child soldiers, who served in the Maoist army during Nepal’s decade-long civil war, returned to civilian life today, the United Nations announced, voicing hope that the discharge will speed up the peace process in the Asian nation.
“Today marks the first step in the return to civilian [...]

NEW YORK – An independent United Nations human rights expert said today there are strong indications that the video of alleged extrajudicial executions by Sri Lankan soldiers that aired last August on British television is authentic, and called for an inquiry into possible war crimes committed during the conflict with Tamil rebels.

Philip Alston, the Special [...]

KABUL – Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has gone down by a fifth as compared to last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported today, attributing the decrease to good local leadership coupled with bad weather.
The Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008 showed a 19 per cent decrease in opium cultivation to 157,000 hectares, [...]

NEW YORK – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called on South Asian governments to strengthen their laws to tackle child trafficking, a neglected form of the wider scourge of human trafficking.
Although there are few reliable estimates of the true scope of child trafficking in the region, UNICEF says that most South Asian nations [...]

NEW YORK – The intercountry adoption business in Nepal has created a culture of child abuse including the abduction, trafficking and sale of children, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and a non-governmental organization (NGO) said in a report released today.
“Child rights, not profit, must be at the centre of all adoptions in Nepal,” says [...]

NEW YORK – The top United Nations envoy to Afghanistan has urged everyone in the South Asian nation, from citizens to Government officials to the media, to stand up against corruption, stressing its damaging impacts on peace and development efforts.
“Corruption in Afghanistan is endemic, it hurts the poorest people disproportionately, pushes people away from the [...]