U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set to travel to Sudan, including the volatile Darfur region, in the coming weeks. From VOA's United Nations bureau, Suzanne Presto looks at recent developments in the U.N.'s role in Darfur.

Desertification, exacerbated by climate change, represents “the greatest environmental challenge of our times” and governments must overhaul policy approaches to the issue or face mass migrations of people driven from degraded homelands within a single generation, warns a new analysis from the United Nations University.

The head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) today called for drug testing to be introduced to curtail substance abuse by automobile drivers and operators of public transportation and commercial aircraft.

The human rights organization, Amnesty International, has presented an appeal from 147 countries to the United Nations to maintain an independent and effective system of human rights experts. A petition signed by more than 12,500 people calling for stronger measures to help victims of human rights abuse was presented to the president of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, says countries in Central Asia continue to use the war on terrorism as an excuse to violate the human rights of their citizens. Arbour has just returned from a two-week visit to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

Iran has agreed to a modified agenda at a UN nonproliferation conference, saving the meeting from collapse. The compromise opens the door to a discussion on compliance with nuclear rules.

Saturday marked one year since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement between the government of Sudan and one Darfur rebel group. But instead of bringing peace to the region, the agreement has lead to more violence, which has crippled the world's largest humanitarian operation. Noel King has this report from Khartoum.

U.S. State Department officials say they believe obstacles to an international agreement on Kosovo's future can be overcome despite vocal Russian opposition to a United Nations mediator's plan. U.S. and other senior diplomats of the six-nation Contact Group on Kosovo met Thursday in London. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

Scientists at a UN conference on climate change say nations must make drastic cuts in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in order to limit global warming. The recommendations come in a major report agreed today at a meeting in Bangkok by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

World powers have warned Iran of even more UN sanctions if it does not halt its uranium-enrichment work, which the West suspects could be used to build nuclear weapons. The warning followed a meeting on May 2 in London of senior officials from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- plus Germany.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf opened 10 diamond screening and evaluation offices across Liberia, marking the first step toward restarting the industry in the war-decimated West African country following the removal of a six-year ban by the United Nations.

Scientists and other experts from 120 countries are meeting in Thailand this week to discuss ways to respond to climate change. The same group warned earlier this year that global warming poses a major threat to mankind. Ron Corben reports from Bangkok.