Concerned that some issues continue not to receive sustained media attention or slip off the radar screen, the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) has unveiled a new list of Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About. "The media and the UN share an interest in getting information about what is happening in our world to the public", says Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Shashi Tharoor. "But journalists are often inundated with stories, all competing for their and the public's attention. Our aim is to make it easier for them to see that important issues do not fade from the headlines."

As in previous years, the 2006 list covers a spectrum of issues and geographical regions, some of which draw on troubling humanitarian emergencies and conflict situations (such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nepal), while others focus on vital areas like human rights (asylum law and child prisoners) and development (Liberia and water as a shared resource). The ranking of the stories in the list is not a reflection of their relative significance. Some stories focus on conflicts that may have been in the media spotlight, but highlight a perspective that does not usually get much play. The initiative, first launched in 2004, is not meant to be representative of the UN agenda.

• Liberia is staggering under an external debt of $3.7 billion, a per capita gross domestic product that is estimated to have declined 90 per cent, from $1,269 in 1980 to $163 in 2005, as well as an unemployment rate of over 80 per cent.
• There are no functioning public utilities and the vast majority of Liberians have no access to electricity, water, basic sanitation facilities and health care. Almost all medical services are provided by international non-governmental organizations and UN agencies.
• Roads and bridges, which are needed to open up markets, increase employment, sustain humanitarian access to rural areas and expand the overall protection environment, are in dire need of repairs. While UNMIL engineers and UN country team members have undertaken rehabilitation work on important road networks to facilitate the return of IDPs and refugees, much more remains to be done.
• The education system is dilapidated, with a dearth of qualified teachers and available resources to rehabilitate school buildings.
• Liberia has no effectively functioning judicial system. Outside of the capital, Monrovia, most courts have been destroyed and trial-by-ordeal is not unheard of. The culture of impunity that has developed in the absence of justice must be replaced by respect for human rights and the rule of law.
• During the civil war, the country's human resources suffered from a "brain drain" and crisis-related deaths. Vital socio-economic infrastructure was swept away as bad governance, embezzlement, smuggling of natural resources and economic mismanagement took their toll.
• At the end of civil war, there were 314,000 registered IDPs in the country and 340,000 refugees in neighbouring countries registered with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). While the UN-backed return process for IDPs came to an end in April 2006 and the majority of the refugees have returned to Liberia, resettlement activities continue as returnees struggle to rebuild their lives and communities.

• A constant feature of human history, the notion of asylum had been progressively incorporated into international law, culminating in the establishment of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. By the second half of 2005, no fewer than 146 of the 191 Member States of the United Nations had acceded to these international instruments, which are promoted and supervised by UNHCR.
• The codified principles of asylum set out the rights and obligations pertaining to people who have been obliged to leave their own country and are in need of international protection because of a "well-founded fear of persecution" on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
• Asylum applications in industrialized countries fell sharply in 2005 for the fourth year in a row, as the number of applications submitted totalled 336,000, or 15 per cent fewer than in the previous years.
• The largest drop in the number of asylum seekers in the last five years was recorded outside Europe. Canada and the United States received 54 per cent fewer asylum requests in 2005 than in 2001, while asylum applications in Australia and New Zealand plummeted by 75 per cent in the same period.
• The largest group of asylum seekers in 2005 was from Serbia and Montenegro, which includes those from Kosovo.
• Of the ten leading nationalities of asylum seekers, Iraqis and Haitians rose the sharpest in 2005, both by 27 per cent, while the number of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Turkey continued to drop steadily.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
As the country moves boldly towards historic vote, humanitarian concerns continue to demand attention

• The Democratic Republic of the Congo is Africa's third largest country, comparable in size to Western Europe, and is five times larger than Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone combined, with more than twice their population, nearly 56 million.
• MONUC is the largest peacekeeping operation ever fielded by the United Nations, with an authorized strength of some 17,000 uniformed personnel, as well as civilian specialists in such areas as human rights, humanitarian affairs, child protection, political affairs and medical support.
• Preparations for the scheduled July 2006 election, which is aimed at cementing the country's transition from a six-year civil war to political stability, constitutes the biggest and most complex electoral assistance mission the United Nations has ever undertaken.
• About half of the almost 56 million Congolese are under the age of 18. Children are particularly affected by the crisis: some 20 per cent do not live beyond the age of five, while 38 per cent suffer from malnutrition-20 per cent severely; half of those between the ages of 6 and 11 do not attend school; and nearly 10 per cent are believed to have lost one or both parents to AIDS. An estimated 20,000 have been child soldiers.
• At 1,300 deaths per 100,000 live births, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in Africa.
• With nearly 80 per cent of the population trapped in extreme poverty and more than 70 per cent undernourished, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has appealed for $50 million to support the agricultural rehabilitation of this vast country.

• Nepal has a shot at ending the 10-year-old armed insurgency of the Maoists and at achieving durable peace. After almost three weeks of a general strike and street protests around the nation against direct royal rule, King Gyanendra gave up by the end of April 2006 executive powers of State, which he had assumed in February 2005. He restored the last Parliament and allowed the formation of a government composed of the parliamentary parties.
• A reciprocal ceasefire, government Maoist negotiations and the election of a constituent assembly to decide the future form of government will hopefully be the key milestones of an emerging peace process.
• In the last 10 years of armed Maoist rebellion, some 13,000 civilians have died in the violence in remote and rural areas.
• Half a million children do not attend school at all.
• The country's infant mortality rate, although substantially reduced in the last decade, continues to be high-some 59 per 1,000 children under the age of one.
• Some 86 per cent of Nepal's population lives on less than $2 per day.
• According to a UN human rights monitoring mission, breaches of international humanitarian law by the Maoists include continued use of children within the People's Liberation Army despite their denials that they were recruiting young people under 18. Children have been arrested and tortured on suspicion of being linked to the Communist Party and numerous juveniles are still in detention under anti-terrorist legislation by State authorities. There is also evidence that children are being used by the Royal Nepalese Army as informants or spies.

• Several years of successive rainfall failures have particularly affected pastoral and agro-pastoral communities that are being forced to travel vast distances to find grazing for their animals. Meanwhile, reduced agricultural production has led to a dramatic increase in the price of food commodities, particularly cereals.
• The 2.1 million people dependent on aid represent 25 per cent of the population and include 400,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), many of whom are at risk of dying of malnutrition if the crisis is not addressed. Families in some areas are spending 70 to 80 per cent of the little money they have just to buy water.
• There are over 1,000 national and international staff personnel from UN agencies working in the country; however, there are no international personnel in the major cities of Mogadishu and Kismayu.
• Up to 80 per cent of schools in drought-affected areas are closed in a country where only 20 per cent of children have access to education under normal conditions.
• Security remains the greatest challenge to the Somali peace process. It also continues to impact the dire humanitarian situation, worsened by regional drought. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has made considerable progress in overcoming differences between the different factions; however, several challenges could unravel the fragile peace process. Recent fighting in Mogadishu has deepened tensions, as has the presence of some armed militias in the vicinity of Baidoa--the temporary seat of government. The need to canton these groups and provide food, water and shelter is being addressed by Somali leaders and the TFG, with aid from donors.

• Since the early 1990s, the international community has focused largely on refugee emergencies in high-profile areas, such as the Balkans, the Great Lakes region of Africa and more recently Darfur (Sudan) and Chad. Yet, more than 60 per cent of today's refugees are trapped in situations far from the international spotlight.
• The root causes of long-standing refugee populations stem from the very States whose instability engenders chronic regional insecurity. Most of the refugees in these regions, be they Somalis, Sudanese, Burundians or Burmese, come from countries where conflict has persisted for years.
• East and West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East are all plagued by protracted refugee situations. Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest number (17), involving 1.9 million refugees. The countries hosting the biggest groups are Guinea, Kenya, the United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
• In Asia (China, Thailand, India and Nepal), there are five protracted situations and some 676,000 refugees. Europe has three major cases involving 510,000 refugees, primarily in the Balkans and Armenia.
• Although the measure of at least 25,000 refugees in exile for five years is traditionally used to define protracted situations, UNHCR argues that other groups should not be excluded. For example, of the Rohingya who fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh 12 years ago, 20,000 still remain. Similarly, there are 19,000 Burundians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 16,000 Somalis in Ethiopia, 15,000 Ethiopians in Sudan and 19,000 Rwandans in Uganda.
• While there are fewer refugees in protracted situations today, the number of such situations has greatly increased. According to UNHCR, the refugees are also spending longer periods in exile. It is estimated that in 2003 major refugee situations, protracted or not, averaged 17 years, nearly twice as long as in 1993.

SOUTH ASIAN EARTHQUAKE
Relief effort saves lives, but reconstruction tasks loom large

• As part of the UN-coordinated international response to the earthquake, more than 500,000 tents were delivered, some 5 million iron sheets distributed and over 6 million blankets/quilts provided.
• Safe water was restored to over 700,000 people and thousands of latrine slabs were installed. Countless helicopter flights airlifted food and non-food items. More than 1 million children were vaccinated against measles.
• The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority of Pakistan, in collaboration with the United Nations and several civil society partners, has agreed to the basic framework of an early recovery plan-a set of operational programmes aimed at supporting the longer-term road to recovery and minimizing the gap between relief and reconstruction, for which an estimated $188 million is required over the next 12 months.
• The major challenges foreseen in the coming months are a successful return process, road accessibility in remote areas, potential landslides, continued assistance for vulnerable people and ensuring the broadest possible reach of basic services.

• The term "children in conflict with the law" refers to anyone under 18 who comes into contact with the justice system as a result of being suspected or accused of committing an offence. Most of these children have committed petty crimes or such minor offences as vagrancy, truancy, begging or alcohol use, some of which are known as "status offences" and are not considered criminal when committed by adults.
• UNICEF estimates indicate that more that 1 million children worldwide are living in detention as a result of being in conflict with the law.
• The majority of children who end up in the criminal justice system are from particularly deprived communities and families, often from discriminated minorities.
• Putting children in prison instead of seeking alternatives stigmatizes them as delinquents, robs them of opportunities for jobs and scholarships, and exposes them to others who have committed more serious crimes. It also increases the likelihood of children breaking the law once again.
• UNICEF recommends a number of alternatives to detention, including to: refrain from imprisoning children who are simply trying to survive; divert children who have committed minor crimes away from the criminal justice system; use detention only as a last resort; keep imprisoned children separate from adults; and have Governments monitor the situation very closely, at a minimum having records of how many children are in jail and for how long they have been there.

• There are more than 3,800 unilateral, bilateral or multilateral declarations or conventions on water: 286 are treaties, with 61 referring to over 200 international river basins.
• The past half century has witnessed more than 500 conflict-related events over water, 7 of which have involved violence.
• According to UNESCO, 145 nations have territory within a transboundary basin and 21 lie entirely within one; 12 countries have more than 95 per cent of their territories within one or more transboundary basins. Approximately one third of the existing 263 transboundary basins are shared by more than two countries.
• In a case study demonstrating the effectiveness of the cooperation-approach, Bolivia and Peru, both sharing Lake Titicaca, have recognized how crucial it is to work together on the management of water basin resources through the creation of the Autonomous Water Authority.
• The Northern Aral Sea is being successfully restored after its surface had shrunk to less than half its original size as a result of a massive diversion of water under the Soviet Union, which had drained the two rivers feeding it and devastated the surrounding environment. The Aral Sea is shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but its fresh water basin also encompasses Afghanistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Thanks to a World Bank project, the Sea has now begun to fill up following the completion of the Kok-Aral Dam. Newly rehabilitated waterworks along the Syr Darya River are benefiting farmers by irrigating their lands. The next step is to improve the irrigation efficiency of two thirds of the land in the Kazakh part of the Aral Sea basin. Better water resources management will benefit Central Asian countries by allowing them to address energy and conservation needs more efficiently and potentially even earn revenue from the sale of hydropower to upstream countries.
• Women, who produce between 60 and 80 per cent of the food in most developing countries, are major stakeholders in all development issues related to water, yet they often remain on the periphery of management decisions and planning for water resources.

• Côte d'Ivoire gained independence in 1960 and enjoyed several decades of economic growth and unity, gaining a reputation as an African country's success story. Democracy was introduced in the 1990s, but disaffection among some groups resulted in a series of coups that led to full-fledged civil war by 2002. A peace deal brokered by France was reached in 2003, but this shaky peace was not consolidated.
• In 2004, UNOCI set up its own radio station to counter the effect of inflammatory propaganda and messages of hate. Initially available in Abidjan, the station has extended its reach to cover rebel-held towns in the north. In December 2004, a new Press Law was adopted, which provides the means to sanction poor journalistic practices and inculcate journalistic ethics.
• In December 2005, Charles Konan Banny was appointed interim Prime Minister. Supported by African mediators and the United Nations, his nomination was likely to move forward the Côte d'Ivoire's stalled peace process. However, he faces some difficult tasks, including disarming rebel forces and pro-government militias, the identification of voters and organizing elections by 31 October.
• In January 2006, UN forces and property came under attack by a political group called the "Young Patriots", following which international staff was temporarily withdrawn. Even more alarming, these attacks were incited in some locales by militia and prefecture leaders, who took over local radio stations and used them to broadcast hate messages that encouraged destruction. The Security Council has imposed sanctions on two youth leaders and one rebel commander, and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Pierre Schori, has warned that "preaching violence is tantamount to working for the failure of the peace process".
• Secretary-General Kofi Annan has condemned the resort to hate media and demanded that all parties and leaders desist from such acts, while the Security Council called for sanctions on those who would incite violence and hatred, including by resort to the media.
• The Secretary-General has flagged the preparation of elections and the role of media as outstanding issues. Concrete and dynamic action needs to be taken to begin implementing the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes to dismantle the militia, to redeploy State authority and to identify voters and prepare for the elections.
• A recent report shows an estimated 700,000 persons have been displaced since the beginning of the current crisis in 2002, when an aborted coup against President Laurent Gbagbo led to civil war: 90 per cent of them are living with other families in five large urban areas, putting severe economic strain on many of their hosts. The report also states that 50 per cent of those displaced say their health situation has worsened, while 30 per cent of displaced children lack the means to attend school.