HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY STÉPHANE DUJARRIC,
SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
WEDNESDAY, 18 APRIL 2018
 
SECRETARY-GENERAL TO TRAVEL TO SWEDEN FOR SECURITY COUNCIL RETREAT

• The Secretary-General will leave New York on Friday, 20 April, to conduct his annual retreat with the Security Council hosted by Sweden, followed by a State visit to the country.
• Upon arrival, the Secretary-General will hold his annual informal working meeting with the Security Council, under the Presidency of Peru, on Dag Hammarskjöld's estate Backåkra in Skåne County, southern Sweden.
• On Sunday, 22 April, the Secretary-General will give the Dag Hammarskjöld lecture in Uppsala.
• The following day, he will have bilateral consultations with the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, before heading back to New York in the afternoon.

• In view of the current tensions, the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is undertaking intensive high-level consultations with the aim of proactively ascertaining the options for a meaningful relaunch of the UN-facilitated political process as called for in Security Council resolution 2254.
• To this end, the Special Envoy attended the meeting of Foreign Ministers and the Summit of the League of Arab States, where he had consultations with the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States and the Foreign Ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, among others, as well as the European Union High Representative. 
• The Special Envoy attended meetings of the Secretary-General in Riyadh with His Majesty the King, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, and the Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• The Special Envoy is today in Ankara for meetings with senior Turkish officials, before proceeding to Moscow and Tehran for consultations with senior Russian and Iranian officials. He expects to consult several European Ministers and senior representatives of the United States, and others, on 24 and 25 April at the Brussels Conference.
• He will then brief the Secretary-General on the outcome of these consultations, and in due course brief the Security Council.

• The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that some 137,000 people remain displaced from Syria’s Afrin district in the Tall Refaat, Nabul, Zahraa and Fafin areas as a result of hostilities and military operations that began on 20 January. In addition, an estimated 150,000 people remain inside Afrin district, where access to people in need continues to be extremely limited.
• While the UN continues to provide assistance to people displaced from Afrin, the UN does not have direct regular access to the district and humanitarians operating in the area continue to face access challenges, largely due to movement restrictions enforced by actors on the ground.
• Yesterday afternoon, Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock briefed the Security Council, providing updates on Raqqa and other places. Mr. Lowcock said that since Da’esh was forced out of Raqqa in October, nearly 100,000 people have returned to Raqqa city. However, conditions are not conducive for returns, due to the high levels of unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive device contamination, widespread and severe infrastructural damage, and a lack of basic services.

• Yesterday, the Deputy Secretary-General met, on behalf of the Secretary-General, with the Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations, Ambassador Diego Morejón.
• The Deputy Secretary-General reiterated the Secretary-General’s condemnation of the kidnapping and murder of the three members of a media team in the Ecuadorian northern border. The Deputy Secretary-General conveyed the Secretary-General’s condolences to the families of the victims and expressed the United Nations’ solidarity with the people and the Government of Ecuador.

• The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns today that the food and nutrition situation in Chad is alarming.
• In 2018, four million people are projected to be affected by food insecurity and more than 1.7 million people will need nutrition assistance in the country, including 200,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition among children under five.
• Chad ranked second in the 2017 Global Hunger Index, highlighting the extreme vulnerability of its population.
• This chronic crisis is accentuated by a deep economic and social crisis, and intensifying agro-climatic hazards due to climate change, which affect the most vulnerable populations in the Sahel belt but also in new areas such as Tandjilé.
• In 2018, US$ 282.5 million is needed to save the lives of those most affected by the food and nutrition crisis in Chad.

• UNICEF said today that more than 200 children were released by armed groups in South Sudan yesterday. This was the second release of children in a series, supported by UNICEF, that will see almost 1,000 children released from the ranks of armed groups in the coming months. The 207 children (including 112 boys and 95 girls) were released from the ranks of the South Sudan National Liberation Movement and from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition and took place in a rural community called Bakiwiri, about an hour’s drive from Yambio, in Western Equatoria State.
• During a ceremony, the children were formally disarmed and provided with civilian clothes. Medical screenings will now be carried out, and children will receive counselling and psychosocial support as part of the reintegration programme, which is implemented by UNICEF and partners. When the children return to their homes, their families will be provided with three months’ worth of food assistance to support their initial reintegration.
• Despite this progress, there are still around 19,000 children serving in the ranks of armed forces and groups in South Sudan.

• From Afghanistan, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that worsening food insecurity is likely to be compounded this year by a prolonged dry spell, affecting one million already food insecure people across two thirds of the country. Some 13 million people in Afghanistan are food insecure, eight million of whom are severely food insecure.
• This year’s planting season has been particularly badly affected by the La Niña weather effect, which saw a precipitation deficit of 70 per cent prevailing in most of the country.
• With 2017’s wheat production already reported to be 57 per cent below the five-year average, the 2018 harvest is forecasted to be even lower – down from 4.2 million MT to 3.5 million MT.

• The Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) will sign a cooperation agreement in Berne, Switzerland, tomorrow on confronting illicit trafficking of synthetic opioids and other illicit drugs through the postal network.
• To protect postal operators and to protect people’s health in general, the two organizations will increase cooperation against trafficking and improve the detection and seizure of these substances. They will also share information on trends and patterns in drug movements.
• The agreement is driven by the epidemic in overdose deaths, fuelled by powerful fentanyl-related substances that can be 50 times deadlier than heroin. In the United States in 2016, there were 64,000 overdose deaths with the steepest increases in mortalities involving fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances.

• The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the body charged with keeping global trade in plants and plant products safe has adopted several new phytosanitary standards.
• These standards developed by the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) aim at preventing destructive agricultural and environmental pests from jumping borders and spreading internationally.
• The dangerous hitchhikers carried by global trade — plant pests and diseases -- once introduced into new environments can quickly take root and spread, impacting food production and causing billions in economic damages and control cost.
• One recent study in East Africa, for instance, found that just five invasive alien species could be causing as much as $1.1 billion in economic losses annually to smallholder farmers in the region.

• Cambodia has paid its regular budget dues in full, bringing the Honour Roll to 81.