United Nations

Turkish authorities have since September been detaining scores of refugees, including from Iraq and Syria, and abusing and pressuring them to return home in breach of international law, Amnesty International said Dec. 16.

Victims’ groups and rights campaigners in Bosnia and Croatia praised the UN war crimes court’s decision to order a retrial for former Serbian state security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic.

Yemen's warring parties agreed on Dec. 16 to exchange hundreds of prisoners as part of confidence building measures under U.N.-sponsored peace talks now under way in Switzerland, officials from both sides said.

A draft resolution to be submitted to the UN Security Council takes "explicit" aim at the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and its lucrative trade in oil, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin told AFP in an interview Dec. 16.

For the first time in history, all 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) will be included in the selection of the next Secretary-General, who is to succeed incumbent Ban Ki-moon in 2017.

This was announced by the President of the General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday.

A ceasefire took effect in Yemen on Dec. 15, as parties to the civil war started United Nations-sponsored peace talks in Switzerland in a new push to end months of fighting that have killed nearly 6,000 people, a U.N. spokesman said. 

Turkey's main nationalist leader has stood behind the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in a diplomatic row with Baghdad over the deployment of Turkish troops in a northern Iraqi camp after Baghdad took umbrage with the move.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Dec. 15 to talk about the a way out to end the war in Syria. 

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov began talks in Moscow on Dec. 15 in an effort to keep the brittle Syrian peace process on track.

Turkey's ongoing crisis with Russia and Iraq has proven that the government's long-standing and wrongheaded foreign policy has turned Turkey's regional adversaries into foes and united them into an anti-Turkish bloc, the leader of the main opposition party has said.