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Peter Daou

Ex-Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick Dies

Washington Post: "Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a conservative political scientist who became the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, died at her home outside Washington late Thursday, colleagues announced today. She was 80."

UN Urges Freedoms for Arab Women

BBC: "Discrimination against women is holding back economic and social development across the Arab World, a report by the UN's development agency says.

Somali Government to Get UN Help

CNN: "The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday authorized an African force to protect Somalia's government against an increasingly powerful Islamic militia, hoping to restore peace and avert a broader conflict in the region. The U.S. resolution, co-sponsored by the council's African members, also partially lifts an arms embargo on Somalia so the regional force can be supplied with weapons and military equipment and train the government's security forces."

Ceasefire Needed in Darfur

DARFUR.jpg "A ceasefire and political talks must take place in Sudan's Darfur region before an international military force there could guarantee security, the head of U.N. peacekeeping said on Tuesday. Jean-Marie Guehenno said the international community must demand assurances an African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur would be effective before it offered funding and equipment." More Plus: Darfur is in 'free fall'

Annan Enhances UN Effort to Counter Ugandan Rebels

"The United Nations plans to become more deeply involved in efforts to end the Lord's Resistance Army's reign of terror in northern Uganda, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday. The LRA, which says it wants to rule Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments, has become notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and abducting thousands of children as fighters, porters and sex slaves. About 100,000 people have been killed and nearly 2 million more driven from their homes and into camps in 20 years of brutal war waged by the group in northern Uganda, the U.N. Security Council said two weeks ago." More

Fighting Contemporary Forms of Slavery

"Marking the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for stepped-up measures to end the practice and to address the entrenched poverty which leaves people vulnerable to enslavement. "Contemporary forms of slavery - from bonded labour to human trafficking - are flourishing as a result of discrimination, social exclusion, and vulnerability exacerbated by poverty," the Secretary-General said in a message on the observance." More

UN: AIDS Programs Fail to Reach High-Risk Groups

worldaidsday05_en.gif "Surveillance for the HIV virus is weak in most of the world and prevention and treatment programmes often fail to reach high-risk drug users, homosexuals and sex workers, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. In a message marking World AIDS Day, being celebrated under the theme of Accountability, the WHO's acting director-general Anders Nordstrom said that tackling the AIDS epidemic remained one of the world's most pressing public health challenges." More

Annan Calls on Human Rights Council to Strive for Unity

"Mr. Annan said it is crucial that the Council preserves and strengthens what he called its "crown jewel" - the system of Special Procedures, or rapporteurs, independent experts and working groups tasked with examining a specific area of human rights. "It has long since been recognized in theory, and increasingly also in practice, that the rule of law cannot be left to the discretion of governments, no matter how democratically elected they may be." The Secretary-General said the area most in need of innovation is the organization of the universal periodic review, a peer review mechanism. More