A spokesman for the main Tuareg rebel group, which recently seized the three largest areas in Mali's north, says it has declared a ceasefire, one day after the United Nations Security Council called for an end to violence in the West African nation.

In the last week of July, the United Nations held its High Level Meeting on Youth as part of the closing of the International Year of Youth 2011 in the General Assembly. This year was definitely a historic year that witnessed the massive mobilisation and leadership of youth in the Arab world.

Fierce clashes have been reported between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters in Douma, near the capital Damascus, and in other parts of the country, amid doubts over the government's declared commitment to meeting an imminent ceasefire deadline.

Asia and Africa will account for a hefty 86 percent of all increases in the world's urban population in the next four decades, the United Nations said in a report released Wednesday.

Former combatants in Argentina who took part in the 1982 Malvinas/Falkland Islands war are waging their final battle: they are trying to get the Supreme Court to classify the brutal mistreatment to which they were subjected by their officers as crimes against humanity.

Women in Nepal’s remote rural areas stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their men during the bloody 1996-2006 civil war that overthrew an oppressive monarchy, but many now battle domestic violence at home.

Suicide bombers act in the name of Islam — but clerics deny them even last rites over such killing of others and themselves that they see as un-Islamic.

Japan’s plan to resume official development assistance (ODA) to Myanmar, announced this week, is problematic for a country faced with a dauntingly large disaster recovery budget for areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami last year.

Two days after hailing Sunday's parliamentary by-elections in Myanmar, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Washington would begin a process of 'targeted easing' of longstanding economic sanctions against the Southeast Asian nation.

The government of Brazil, which will host the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June, defended itself from ecologists who lambasted its performance on the environmental front.