Noon briefing of 2 November 2017

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY STÉPHANE DUJARRIC,
SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
THURSDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2017

SECRETARY-GENERAL TO ATTEND WEB SUMMIT IN LISBON

• On Monday, the Secretary-General will be in Lisbon to participate in Web Summit 2017, which brings together the leaders of key Internet companies with officials from different governments.
• The Secretary-General’s remarks to the Web Summit will be live-streamed.
• He is expected back in New York on Tuesday.

• Tomorrow, the Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, and the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Haiti Josette Sheeran will depart New York for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to meet with high-level government officials and key stakeholders, visit communities that have been hardest hit by the cholera epidemic, as well as to visit government flagship development initiatives.
• After her visit to Haiti, the Deputy Secretary-General will travel to Washington, D.C. While there, the Deputy Secretary-General will meet with high-level government officials and the senior leadership at the World Bank. She will also speak at the Foreign Policy 2017 Diplomat of the Year Dinner.
• The Deputy Secretary-General will return to New York on 6 November 2017.

• This morning, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, briefed the Security Council, and presented the stark reality the international community now faces, with major new crises causing massive displacement across virtually all regions.
• Mr. Grandi noted that the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide is now approaching 66 million, up from 42 million in 2009. This includes 17.2 million refugees under UNHCR’s responsibility, a 70 per cent increase in eight years. He stressed that securing solutions for the millions of uprooted people, and avoiding a repeat of the massive outflows that have taken place over recent years, ultimately rests on political solutions.
• Mr. Grandi cited several ongoing crises, including the conflict in Syria and the violence in Iraq, which together accounted for a quarter of all those forcibly displaced. But new crises have developed, he said, with many unfolding “in ungoverned spaces, driven by varying combinations of poverty and underdevelopment, environmental degradation, inequality and persecution.” At the same time, situations that appeared to have stabilized, such as those in Burundi, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, have been affected by new crises triggering new refugee outflows; while protracted situations – as in Afghanistan and Somalia – remained entrenched.
• Mr. Grandi urged the Council to support measures to address the causes of conflict. He also spoke of the need to fight human trafficking, and sustain the protection of displaced people while solutions to conflict are pursued.

• A senior official from the UN Refugee Agency, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Volker Türk, has wrapped up a visit to Myanmar.
• In the capital, Naypitaw, he met with Government officials, urging them to allow unrestricted humanitarian access to communities in need and for the voluntary return of Rohingya refugees in safety and dignity.
• Mr. Turk welcomed the Government’s renewed commitment to rapidly implement the recommendations of the Advisory Commission of Rakhine State.
• While in the region, he will also visit Thailand and Bangladesh.

• The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that the rate of Rohingya refugees entering Bangladesh from Myanmar has slowed in recent days, though there are reports that several thousands are believed to be waiting to cross into Bangladesh.
• As of this past weekend, 607,000 refugees had arrived in Cox’s Bazar since 25 August – roughly equivalent to the entire urban population of Copenhagen, bringing the total number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to well over 800,000 people.
• Authorities and aid workers continue to race to prevent a public health crisis due to overcrowding, unclean water and poor sanitation in many camps through such measures as vaccination campaigns and the construction of emergency latrines.

• Yesterday, a United Nations-Syrian Arab Red Crescent-International Committee of the Red Cross convoy delivered food, nutrition, health, education and other items for 92,750 people in Talbiseh (in Homs) and Tlul ElHomor (in Hama). The last time these two locations were reached with assistance was in August.
• We continue to call for safe, unimpeded and sustained access for close to 3 million people in hard-to-reach and besieged areas, including the facilitation of medical evacuations in line with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

• A new report by the UN Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and the UN Human Rights Office has found that Da’esh perpetrated serious and systematic violations amounting to international crimes during the nine-month military campaign to liberate Mosul.
• The report is based on direct witness testimony, and documents mass civilian abductions, the use of thousands of people as human shields, the intentional shelling of homes, and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians trying to leave Mosul.
• High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said that, during the course of the operation to retake Mosul, civilians were subjected to shocking human rights abuses and clear violations of international humanitarian law.
• For his part, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Ján Kubiš, said that Da’esh’s evil acts extended beyond killing and terrorizing residents, as they wantonly destroyed cultural and religious monuments in total disregard of history and Islam, the religion it falsely claimed to represent.
• The report calls on the international community, including the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, to take action to ensure that those responsible for international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are held accountable.

• In Afghanistan, UNICEF today said that 9,500 children die each year from diarrhea. This amounts to 26 diarrhea-related deaths every day across the country.
• UNICEF said the risks associated with diarrhea are exacerbated in Afghanistan – a country where some 1.2 million children are already malnourished and 41 per cent of children are stunted. Poor sanitation and hygiene compound malnutrition, leaving children more susceptible to infections that cause diarrhea, which in turn worsens malnutrition.
• UNICEF is calling on all districts in the country to adopt a community-led sanitation approach and for donors to support the movement to improve and save the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in the country.

• Global food prices dipped in October, led lower by dairy products. That’s according to the Food Price Index of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
• The FAO Dairy Price Index declined 4.2 percent during the month, marking its first drop since May. Vegetable oil, sugar and meat also declined, while cereal edged up a notch, 0.4 percent led by higher rice prices.
• FAO’s latest estimates point to a 1.0 percent expansion in world cereal utilization in the coming year, with world cereal stocks on course to set a new record level by the close of seasons in 2018.

• Today is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
• In his message for the Day, the Secretary-General said that when journalists are targeted, societies as a whole also pay the price. He also reiterated the UN’s commitment to help create the environment journalists need to perform their vital work and said he’s mobilizing a network of focal points from throughout the UN system to propose specific steps to intensify our efforts to enhance the safety of journalists and media workers.
• Over the past 11 years, more than 900 journalists have been killed just for doing their jobs, and only one in ten cases committed against media workers over the past decade has led to a conviction.
• To mark the Day, there will be a panel at 1:00 p.m. in Conference Room 8 organized by UNESCO. On social media, the hashtags for the Day are #EndImpunity and #JournoSafe.

• The Department of Public Information has recently launched an enhanced version of the UN News mobile application.
• The new version of the app is available in the six official languages and includes features like access to the latest UN news, activities and events, as well as videos, photos and other multimedia products.
• The app is free of charge and is available for both Android and Apple devices.