HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY STÉPHANE DUJARRIC,
SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
TUESDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2017
 
SECRETARY-GENERAL TO TAKE PART IN GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT IN PARIS

• The Secretary-General will travel to Paris, France, next week to attend the One Planet Summit on Tuesday, 12 December, on the two-year anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. The Summit is being hosted by the French Government, the UN and the World Bank, and seeks to accelerate climate action and implementation of the Agreement by finding innovative ways to mobilize public and private finance and investment.
• He will leave Paris on Tuesday evening and travel to Tokyo, Japan.

• The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, will be in Washington D.C. tomorrow. He will speak at the US Institute for Peace and will participate in a panel discussion on the importance of UN Peacekeeping and its reform.

• The Security Council held consultations this morning on Yemen, where it was briefed by the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, and the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock.
• The Special Envoy warned the Council of alarming levels of violence which are having a devastating impact on the civilian population, calling on the parties to show restraint and to abstain from provocative actions.
• The killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and others are an adverse development, which he said would constitute a considerable change to the political dynamics in Yemen.
• The Special Envoy emphasized that the need for a negotiated settlement is more acute today than ever, reiterating that only an inclusive peace process can bring a peaceful, viable and sustainable solution for the people of Yemen.
• For his part, Mr. Lowock told the Council that the humanitarian situation remains severe, with millions of Yemenis are now on the cusp of the largest famine in modern times.
• Nearly 8.5 million people are on the brink of starvation, up from under 7 million in June.
• Despite calls made yesterday for a humanitarian ceasefire, airstrikes have continued while ground fighting and shelling have been reduced.
• Two Coalition airstrikes struck close to the UN compound in Sana’a yesterday, both less than 1,000 meters from the compound. The UN again stresses that attacks directed against UN and humanitarian premises and against civilian infrastructure are strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law.
• While the World Food Programme (WFP) has 136,000 metric tons of food supplies in Yemen and there has been a limited resumption in commercial food imports, but this is not enough.
• There are seven commercial vessels carrying half a month’s supply of Yemen’s food requirements just off the coast of Yemen, awaiting Coalition permission to enter Hodaidah and Saleef ports. There are also seven commercial vessels carrying desperately needed fuel en route to Yemen.
• Humanitarian flights, including UN and Red Cross flight, resumed to Sana’a this morning. Another NGO flight is expected tomorrow.

• In Geneva, the eighth round of intra-Syrian talks are resuming this afternoon with a meeting between Staffan de Mistura, the Special Envoy for Syria, and the delegation of the Syrian National Council.
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is deeply concerned for the well-being and protection of civilians in Raqqa city and surrounding areas where 34,000 people have reportedly returned.
• There continue to be reports of explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices resulting in casualties daily. On 1 and 2 December, 11 people were reportedly killed and many injured by landmines.
• Raqqa city reportedly also urgently requires food, water and other assistance. We are concerned about the possibility of disease spreading due to unburied bodies. But humanitarian partners remain unable to access the city until the clearing of mines and other unexploded ordnance is completed.

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that clashes intensified in the past week in the east and center of the Central African Republic, forcing over 15,000 people to flee. In Bria, tensions remain high and humanitarian assistance was suspended due to threats to humanitarian workers in the area. 32 protection incidents were registered in the past week alone.
• A succession of clashes that started on 23 November in Pendé, in Ouham-Pendé prefecture, and in 11 other villages in the area displaced some 5,000 people around Paoua town. A humanitarian assessment mission found that most of the houses have been looted and that health facilities need support. The registration of internally displaced people started on 3 December and assistance will be delivered in Paoua town.
• Recent clashes in Dembia town, in Mbomou prefecture, also resulted in 75% of houses burnt and over 10,000 people forcibly displaced toward Rafaï town. And an upsurge of violence was also recorded in Ippy, in Ouaka prefecture, forcing the population to seek refuge in Bambari, 111 km from Ippy.
• In a statement yesterday evening, the Secretary-General condemned the killing of a Mauritanian peacekeeper and the wounding of three others in Bria in eastern Central African Republic.

• The Secretary-General spoke to the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee yesterday afternoon, and he told the principal budgetary body of the UN that reform is not an end in itself.  The purpose of reform is simple and clear: to best position the United Nations to do the work that Member States ask us to do. 
• He noted that over the past seven months, he and his team have conducted extensive consultations and outreach with Member States and he outlined four key areas where he intends to make concrete changes:
• First, empowering the leadership of the Organization to better deliver on the mandates entrusted to us by Member States.
• Second, becoming more transparent and better able to demonstrate the link between resources and programme delivery, with stronger risk management frameworks. 
• Third, to enable effective and timely action, managers must have the authority, under clear conditions, to exercise decisions closer to the point of delivery.
• Fourth, reorganizing management structures at Headquarters to provide better support to managers and ensure accountability. 

• The UN Migration Agency (IOM) today said that in collaboration with Médecins du Monde, it has been able to provide 1,200 migrants and refugees in Greece with primary health care services over a two-month period through its mobile medical units programme.
• The programme, which is funded by the European Union, has allowed medical teams to conduct over 3,400 primary health care consultations, an average of almost 80 daily, since it began in September.

U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ‘SHOCKINGLY BRUTAL ATTACKS’ AGAINST ROHINGYA IN MYANMAR

• The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, today condemned what he calls widespread, systematic and shockingly brutal attacks against the Rohingya, as well as decades of discrimination and persecution against them.
• At a special session of the Human Rights Council on the current situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, he called for appropriate action to be taken to stop what he calls this madness now.
• The High Commissioner urged the Council to consider making a recommendation to the General Assembly that it establish a new impartial and independent mechanism, complementary to the work of the Fact-Finding Mission into the latest wave of violence and abuses, to assist individual criminal investigations of those responsible. 

• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein today called on Mexican authorities not to pass a proposed law on internal security that would enshrine the role of the armed forces in law enforcement.
• The High Commissioner said the draft law is “disturbingly ambiguous” and expressed concern about its lack of an exit strategy for gradually ending the use of armed forces in law enforcement. The law also lacks adequate assurances against the unlawful, arbitrary or excessive use of force, he said.

• More than four decades into the HIV epidemic, four out of five children living with HIV in West and Central Africa are still not receiving life-saving antiretroviral therapy. That is according to a joint report from UNICEF and UNAIDS, which also shows that AIDS-related deaths among adolescents aged 15-19 are on the rise.
• While acknowledging progress in several areas, the report “Step Up the Pace: Towards an AIDS-free generation in West and Central Africa” shows that West and Central Africa are lagging behind on nearly every measure of HIV prevention, treatment and care programmes for children and adolescents. In 2016, an estimated 60,000 children were newly infected with HIV in West and Central Africa.
• The report proposes strategies to accelerate progress in curbing the spread of disease, such as the integration of HIV services into key social services including health, education and protection, among others.

• Today is World Soil Day, and this year’s theme is "Caring for the Planet starts from the Ground." To mark the Day, the Food and Agriculture Organization has launched a global map showing the amount of carbon stocks in the soil. As a major carbon storage system, soils are essential for sustainable agriculture and climate change mitigation. The Global Soil Organic Carbon Map, shows natural areas with high carbon storage that require its conservation, as well as those regions where there is the possibility for further carbon sequestration.