The exodus spawned by the  four-year  long Syrian conflict has now become the United Nations refugee agency’s largest crisis in almost a quarter of a century and risks deteriorating even further as fighting in the country shows no sign of abating.

During this year’s session, the World Heritage Committee, which was chaired by Maria Böhmer, Minister of State at the German Federal Foreign Office and member of the Bundestag, inscribed 24 new sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and approved extensions to three existing sites. It also added three World Heritage sites to the List of World Heritage in Danger and took one off the List.

Secretary General Jagland has said that children’s rights remain high on the Council of Europe’s agenda. "We still cannot say that children are treated as  full-fledged  holders of  rights-meaning  all their rights, by all governments, by all adults, at all times, and in all settings," he said, "But that is what we must continue to work towards."

7 July 2015 — The top United Nations human rights official today expressed deep concern about the human rights implications regarding the scope of a new law on national security adopted by China on 1 July.

A Canadian human rights group has told the UN that the troubles faced by the country’s indigenous population are one of Canada’s most pressing social issues. The organization also criticized the government approach to  anti-terrorism  legislation.

6 July 2015 — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced today that "a further inquiry or investigation would be necessary to finally establish the facts" of the death of the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, along with 15 others more than 50 years ago. A statement by Mr. Ban’s spokesperson said the three-member Independent Panel…

Chicago was yet again riddled with a flurry of shootings this Fourth of July weekend, with at least 47 wounded and nine killed, according to multiple media reports.

Serbia has come a long way in creating a regulatory and institutional framework for fighting corruption, concludes a report published 2 July by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO).

Doctors in Belgium are granting a  24-year-old  woman who is suffering from depression but is otherwise healthy the right to die as she qualifies for euthanasia under the Belgian law, even though she does not have a terminal or  life-threatening  illness.

The staff members of the World Health Organization (WHO) dispatched five tonnes of medicines and medical supplies to the eastern regions of Ukraine, the UN news centre said.