On 3 September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Sudan on his first official visit to the country. A key objective of the trip, according to Ban, is to “lock in the progress made so far" towards ending the crisis.

On 16 September, Globe for Darfur, an international coalition of which UNA-UK is a member, is holding its fourth Day for Darfur rally. The day’s theme is 'don't look away now', and people around the world will wear blindfolds to tell world leaders not to turn a blind eye to the atrocities in Darfur.

To mark the day in the UK, a rally is being held from midday outside the Sudanese Embassy in London before moving on to Downing Street.

To read more and to access a link to the Day for Darfur website, click here.

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UNA-UK Chair Lord Hannay has written to Foreign Secretary David Miliband encouraging the government to step up efforts to revive a comprehensive Middle East peace process.

In the letter, which can be viewed here, Lord Hannay says, "For far too long now the region has suffered from the lack of any serious international attempt to address the core problems of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours; and last summer, in Lebanon and Gaza, we saw the consequences of that neglect. It is encouraging, therefore, that the government is giving a high priority to the new initiatives under discussion."

To visit the FCO's webpage on the UK government's work towards a Middle East peace process, click here.

For information about the UN's work in the Middle East, click here.

The Iraq Commission is an independent, cross-party panel of UK experts set up by Channel 4 in partnership with the Foreign Policy Centre to provide recommendations on the UK's future role in Iraq.

The Commission held nine hearings during June, taking evidence from around 50 witnesses with a broad range of expertise and an in-depth understanding of the region’s political, military, diplomatic and humanitarian issues. It was jointly chaired by Lord Ashdown, Baroness Jay and Lord King and included nine expert commissioners – one of whom was UNA-UK Chair Lord Hannay, who participated in a purely personal capacity.

The Iraq Commission released its recommendations in a report on 14 July and presented them in a Channel 4 television programme.

Click here to read more about the Iraq Commission and to view its report.

Click here to read a fact sheet about the UN Mission in Iraq (UNAMI)

On 10 July, UNA-UK co-hosted a seminar at the Foreign Press Association in London to launch a major NGO report entitled ‘Consolidating the peace? Views from Sierra Leone and Burundi on the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission’.

The seminar presented findings from research by ActionAid, CAFOD and CARE International UK on the UN Peacebuilding Commission's first year and its pilot interventions in Sierra Leone and Burundi.

The seminar was chaired by UNA-UK's Peace & Security Programme Officer, Tim Kellow, and featured presentations from Lord Hannay of Chiswick, UNA-UK’s Chair; Tennyson Williams, ActionAid Sierra Leone Country Director; and two of the report’s authors - Anne Street of ActionAid, and Howard Mollett of CARE International UK.

Click here to read more about the Peacebuilding Commission event.

On 26 June, for the second year in a row, UNA-UK partnered with the Canadian High Commission and the Center on International Cooperation at New York University to host the UK launch event of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations at Canada House in Trafalgar Square.

The Review is a project of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, with the support of the Peacekeeping Best Practices Section of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the International Peace Academy. It is the most comprehensive report of its kind, examining both the UN and non-UN peacekeeping missions during 2006, and aims to provide policy makers, member of the media, academics around the world and peacekeepers in the field.

Click here to read a brief paper on the Review and view photgraphs from this event.