Noon briefing of 15 April 2016

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY FARHAN HAQ,

DEPUTY-SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON

FRIDAY, 15 APRIL 2016

SECRETARY-GENERAL UNDERSCORES IDP AND REFUGEE CRISIS CHALLENGES, PARTICIPATES IN WORLD BANK AND INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND EVENTS

• In Washington D.C., the Secretary-General attended the annual Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG).
• He also participated in an event on the development challenges of forced displacement.
• The Secretary-General told the audience that he had been deeply moved by the refugees and internally displaced people whom he had met during his recent visit to the Middle East with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.
• He also underscored that today’s internal displacement and refugee crises are signs of deeper challenges that must be resolved -- from Syria to Afghanistan to South Sudan. To that end, he will be convening the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul to provide a platform to put a focus on root causes and prevention, to bridge the gap between humanitarian and development assistance, and to improve our global response to forced displacement.
• The Secretary-General is about to speak at the inaugural meeting of the Inaugural Assembly Meeting of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, which brings together multilateral organizations, governments and the private sector.
• The Secretary-General will make the point that it is essential that multilateral financial institutions and the private sector provide the policy instruments and resources needed to support the transformation to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy.
• Later in the afternoon, the Secretary-General will speak at a ministerial pledging session of International Conference for the New Financing Initiative to Support the Middle East and North Africa Region.
• The Secretary-General will end the day by attending a celebration of the partnership between the World Bank and the United Nations.

U.N. PEACEKEEPING HEAD BRIEFS SECURITY COUNCIL ON SITUATION IN CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC, NOTES THAT POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS WERE OVERSHADOWED BY ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE

• The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hervé Ladsous, briefed the Security Council on the situation in the Central African Republic.
• He said that the swearing in two weeks ago of the new president, Faustin Archange Touadéra, formally ended the country’s transition, and that the promulgation of the new constitution by the outgoing Head of State of the Transition on the day of the inauguration symbolized a return to constitutional order.
• Mr. Ladsous also noted that President Touadéra had also moved quickly on the formation of a new Government and had vowed publicly to respect the newly-promulgated Constitution and to work towards national unity.
• Mr. Ladsous also said that, while he was in Bangui for the presidential inauguration, he witnessed the important progress made toward national healing in the Boeing neighbourhood where Muslim and Christian communities are now engaged in exemplary local reconciliation processes, supported by the UN Mission in the Central African Republic MINUSCA. He said that these important efforts provide the foundation for long-lasting peace.
• Mr. Ladsous however noted that the positive developments in the country had again been overshadowed by allegations of misconduct and sexual exploitation and abuse by MINUSCA and international forces.
• He said “We stand firmly behind the victims that showed courage in coming forward and continue to work to ensure that they receive the assistance and justice they deserve”.
• He also stressed that UN counts on and expects that troop-and police-contributing countries will also re-double their efforts to address this unacceptable conduct.
• Mr. Ladsous said he was committed to continue addressing the issue at all levels.

SYRIA: U.N. ENVOY BRIEFS PRESS, WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME REPORTS SUCCESS ON HUMANITARIAN AID AIR-DROPS

• In Geneva, Staffan de Mistura, the Special Envoy for Syria, spoke to the press following his meeting with the Syrian Government delegation.
• The World Food Programme (WFP) has this week carried out three airdrops over the besieged eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzour, dropping urgently needed food assistance – rice, chickpeas and beans -- to meet the immediate needs of more than 25,000 people.
• The food was dropped from a high altitude on pallets with parachutes and it was collected on the ground by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), which is organizing food distributions.
• All three airdrops had contained 26 pallets of food. The third airdrop of 26 pallets was completed yesterday, with a 100 percent success rate – as was the one that took place on Tuesday, as you will recall. On Sunday, 22 out of 26 pallets landed safely for distribution, while WFP is working to determine what happened to the other four pallets.

U.N. REFUGEE AGENCY BEGINS RELOCATING MOZAMBICAN REFUGEES IN MALAWI

• The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced on April 15 that a major relocation operation aimed at improving living conditions for nearly 10,000 Mozambican asylum-seekers began in southern Malawi.
• Last month, the Government of Malawi authorised UNHCR to relocate the Mozambican asylum-seekers to a former camp at Luwani that has been re-opened for this purpose.
• The majority of the Mozambican asylum-seekers, nearly 10,000, have so far been living in overcrowded conditions in an area about 100-kilometres south of the capital of Malawi, Lilongwe.

SWITCH OF POLIO VACCINES SEEN AS STEP TO ERADICATE DISSEASE

• Next week marks the beginning of the largest and fastest globally coordinated rollout of a vaccine into routine immunization programs in history.
• Between 17 April and 1 May, 155 countries and territories around the world will stop using the trivalent oral polio vaccine (tOPV), which protects against all three strains of wild poliovirus, and replace it with bivalent OPV (bOPV), which protects against the remaining two wild polio strains, types 1 and 3.
• This transition, referred to as the global vaccine “switch,” is possible because type 2 wild polio has been eradicated.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) consider that the world is closer than ever to ending polio worldwide.

INTERNATIONAL MARITIME ORGANIZATION TO ESTABLISH TECHNOLOGY CENTERS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

• The International Maritime Organization (IMO) kick-started today a joint-project with the European Union to help mitigate the harmful effects of climate change.
• The project envisions the creation of five Maritime Technology Cooperation Centers, one in each of five target regions - Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific - to form a global network.
• IMO is inviting organizations located in the target regions with the capacity to set up such centers to submit an Expression of Interest by 15 May 2016.

UNAIDS RELEASES NEW REPORT ON DRUG POLICIES

• Ahead of the UN General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, which will take place from 19 to 21 April in New York, UNAIDS has released a new report entitled Do no harm: health, human rights and people who use drugs.
• The report shows that the failure of many countries to adopt health- and rights-based approaches resulted in no reduction in the global number of new HIV infections among people who inject drugs between 2010 and 2014.
• Strategies based on criminalization and aggressive law enforcement have created barriers to harm reduction while having little or no impact on the number of people who use drugs, the report adds.

EUROPE: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION LAUNCHES INFORMATION GATEWAY

• The World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) announced the full implementation of its European Health Information Gateway.
• The dedicated web-portal is now available to the public, providing reliable health data and information presented in formats that are easy to understand and compare and easy to extract.
• This mine of health information features an interactive section with arrays of health-related data, country profiles and various health surveys.
• New content and content from existing WHO/Europe databases are being added continually.

***On Monday, 18 April, the guest at the Noon Briefing will be Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education***