Samir Sanbar, A Guide to Information at the United Nations . You certainly will not be chastised for quoting United Nations statistics. If you are unfamiliar with the work of the UN, start with this US State Dept. summary and the UN website . Unions is a meta-search engine of many UN websites and works beautifully.
Unions also offers a simple directory .
Here is a much-simplified Unions gateway . The UN Press Release database , a part of the UN News Center, stretches back to October 1995. The search is flexible with a range of field searches, including a very good category search, available from the UN Press Release search page. Press briefings in particular are short, concise and searchable. Read the current Press Briefing Highlights or search them .