Japan's Ambassador to the United Nations Tsuneo Nishida on Friday called for a panel report on the implementation of U.N. sanctions against North Korea to be published soon after it is officially presented to the Security Council. The Panel of Experts, which assists the council's Sanctions Committee, produces a report every year to present cases of illicit trade of military-linked materials and luxury items banned under the mandate of the sanctions imposed over Pyongyang's ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests.

OTTAWA - Canada is obstructing efforts to compensate three men who suffered torture in Syria — effectively ignoring a key recommendation from the United Nations Committee against Torture, says Amnesty International. In a brief to the UN committee, the human rights group says it is "profoundly concerned" that Canada has not heeded the committee's call to provide redress to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin. The three Arab-Canadians were brutalized in Syrian prisons, in part due to lapses by Canadian agencies documented by a federal inquiry in 2008.

An armed group on Tuesday abducted four UN peacekeepers from the Philippines in the Golan Heights, which has been hit by a mounting spillover from the Syrian civil war, the United Nations said. The four were patrolling near the Al Jamlah locality in the ceasefire zone between Israel and Syria where 21 Filipino peacekeepers were seized by Syrian rebels in March, said a UN peacekeeping spokeswoman, Josephine Guerrero. "An unknown armed group" took the men, Guerrero told AFP. "Efforts are underway to secure their release."

Sexual violence and harassment is widespread in India and perpetuated in public places, in the family and in the workplace, a U.N. human rights official said Wednesday after undertaking a U.N.-commissioned study on violence against women in India. Rashida Manjoo, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women, said the Indian government's "inability and/or unwillingness" to acknowledge and address the core structural causes of violence against women is the main reason for the failure to prevent such incidents.