Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Noeleen Heyzer of Singapore as Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Ms. Heyzer is the first woman to head ESCAP, which is the biggest of the UN's five regional commissions, both in terms of population served and area covered.

UNIFEM Regional Office for CIS announces Call for Proposals for the UN Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women for 2007.

GENEVA – UNICEF and the UN refugee agency today issued a $129 million joint appeal aimed at getting tens of thousands of uprooted Iraqi children back in school.

Warning that a generation of Iraqis could grow up uneducated and alienated, the two UN agencies presented a plan to support host governments such as Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon in providing schooling for an additional 155,000 young Iraqi refugees during the 2007-08 school year.

On 4 December 2006, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, IOM launched the First Travelling Film Festival on Migrant and Human Rights in Central AsiaKazakhstan and then further travelled to Kyrgyzstan in December 2006. The films will travel to Tajikistan in February 2007. Screenings have been organized within the local communities, including schools and universities, where a specially prepared tutorial material has been presented and distributed. entitled “Rights in the Spotlight”. Funded by the Royal Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and carried out within the Central Asia Partnership Group Programme, this initiative has started with screenings in.