Croatia won the right Tuesday to sue Serbia for genocide after the United Nations' highest court ruled it has the legal power to decide the case.

Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president who has been appointed special United Nations envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is planning this weekend to meet Laurent Nkunda of the Congrès National Pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), the rebel leader whose forces are challenging the DRC government in the eastern Congo.

Three members of the globally respected group of Elders, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former United States President Jimmy Carter, and international advocate for women and children's rights Graça Machel are expected to visit Zimbabwe next weekend to assess the escalating humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations Population Fund has said culturally sensitive approaches could help alleviate undue suffering among women around the globe. But is culture itself, in many parts of the world, the real problem?

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is overcoming its reluctance to send more peacekeepers to help avert a new war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the top U.N. peacekeeping official said on Tuesday.

The prolonged drought across much of Ethiopia is likely to continue into next year, and the outlook for crop production in the east of the country remains grim, the United Nations humanitarian wing said today.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today began distributing food to over 135,000 people displaced by fighting in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has forced an estimated 250,000 people to flee their homes in recent months.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has deplored last week's stoning to death of a 13-year-old Somali girl who was a victim of rape.

United Nations agencies are stepping up their efforts to assist hundreds of thousands of people displaced by violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), amid reports that fighting has resumed in rebel-held territory in North Kivu while the ceasefire seems to be holding in the provincial capital of Goma.

THE United Nations special envoy to Lord's Resistance Army-affected areas, Joachim Chissano, has convened a meeting in Kampala to restart the stalled Juba peace-talks.