News stories by Beatrice Paez, page 2

Despite the creation of a High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF), a group of hard-hit Pacific islands is expressing doubt that aid will be delivered in a timely manner.

Six months after Haiti's devastating earthquake, U.N. aid agencies say they are entering the challenging phase of replacing the tents that are home to the estimated 1.5 million people who remain displaced.

A group of 80 students, broken into smaller groups with their notebooks in tow, troop through the boroughs of New York City to survey the produce that populates farmers' markets and grocery stores in their neighbourhoods. Across the world, a similar image emerges in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where female students are learning to grow edible mushrooms in their villages.

Nine million more people have fallen into poverty in Latin American and Caribbean countries since the global financial crisis struck, threatening the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline, according to a report released Thursday by 18 U.N. agencies.

The sight of girls and boys playing cricket and skateboarding together in the streets of Afghanistan and Iraq may be unexpected to some, but it is a homegrown effort aimed at fostering gender equality.

Ahead of a week-long meeting on gender equality starting Monday at the United Nations, women's rights activists have been pushing for concrete progress on a pledge made last September by the world body to create a new, better-funded U.N. agency for women.

Despite the ongoing financial crisis, global poverty rates are expected to fall by half in the next five years compared to 1990, according to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report 2010 launched on Wednesday by Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon.

Individuals and armed groups that are considered repeat offenders in the recruitment and use of child soldiers may soon be subject to United Nations sanctions.

Gangs and armed groups may rank below militaries and law enforcement agencies in the possession of firearms, but 'they have consistently shown a willingness to use guns and use them for violence,' says Dr. Jennifer Hazen, a senior researcher with the authoritative Small Arms Survey.

The U.S. currently lags behind several Western European countries in closing a legislative loophole banning the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) beyond its borders to protect U.S. citizens and residents. But this may soon change.