GUEST TOMORROW
Tomorrow, our guest will be Edem Wosornu, the Director of OCHA’s Operations and Advocacy branch. She will be joining us from Niamey in Niger to brief you on the situation there.
SECRETARY-GENERAL’S TRAVELS
In Davos, in Switzerland, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres delivered a special address to the World Economic Forum on the state of the world.
It’s good to see Davos highlighting the global crisis in trust, he told the government and business leaders gathered, adding that this crisis is the result of a paradox facing our world: We seem powerless to act in the face of the existential threats of runaway climate change chaos and runaway development of artificial intelligence without guardrails.
Geopolitical divides are preventing us from coming together around global solutions for these challenges. But, Mr. Guterres said, he is confident we can build a new multipolar global order with new opportunities for leadership, balance and justice in international relations. Rebuilding trust is not just a slogan or a PR campaign, he said. It requires deep reforms to manage geopolitical tensions in new eras of multipolarity.
We shared his remarks with you.
He continued to have a number of bilaterals, we flagged to you yesterday afternoon the bilaterals he had yesterday, he’s having more today. He met with the Prime Minister of Iraq. He also had a discussion with Hans Grundberg, his Special Envoy on Yemen and he also met with the President of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. And more bilaterals will be made clear later. He also had a press encounter on Artificial Intelligence with members of his Advisory Board.
And tomorrow, as we previously announced, he will be travelling to Thun, also in Switzerland, to meet with his Special Envoys and Special Representatives in their annual retreat.
GAZA
And you will have noticed in his remarks in Davos, the Secretary-General obviously touched on the situation in the Middle East and in Gaza particularly, saying that the world is standing by as civilians, mostly women and children, are being killed, maimed, bombarded, forced from their homes and denied access to humanitarian aid.
He repeated his call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and a process that leads to sustained peace for Israelis and Palestinians, based on a two-state solution. This is the only way to stem the suffering and to prevent a spillover that could send the entire region up in flames, he said.
Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs tells us that since Friday, an ongoing telecommunications blackout in Gaza has impeded the humanitarian response, as well as prevented people from calling for first responders and accessing life-saving supplies and information obviously, accessing lifesaving information. There have been recurrent telecommunications outages in Gaza since 7 October.
Despite all of the ongoing challenges that we have talked about often here, partners in Gaza have managed to deliver since 7 October some 34,000 cubic metres of water through water trucking, as well as 2,400 cubic metres of bottled water, which is obviously, not enough to meet the needs, but we continue to pursue our efforts despite the challenges. And if they weren’t there, we could do obviously a lot more.
Meanwhile, UNICEF projects that child wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, could impact 10,000 children in Gaza in the next few weeks. Additionally, UNICEF has warned that children in southern Gaza are accessing only 1.5 to 2 litres of water per day, well below the recommended requirement for survival. According to humanitarian standards, the minimum amount of water needed in an emergency is 15 litres, which includes water for drinking, washing, and cooking. For survival alone, the estimated minimum is three litres of water per day.
SIGRID KAAG
And a number of you had asked me this morning about Sigrid Kaag and her whereabouts and in answer to your questions I can tell you that our Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator was in Gaza today. She crossed through the Rafah crossing. She was there briefly, where she was able to see for her own self the logistical operation that we have.
Today, she also visited Al Arish, which as you know is a critical staging area for humanitarian aid into Gaza. And Al Arish is of course in Egypt.
Speaking to reporters at Al Arish, she said that this was the first of many visits as part of her mandate to facilitate, to accelerate and to expedite humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. She underscored the importance of the collaboration by all parties to improve and to move faster, adding that the only goal is to meet the needs of the civilian population.
Yesterday, she held productive discussions with Egyptian officials, as well civil society organizations and she is currently in Israel and we will update you on the meetings she will have there.
DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL TRAVELS
Our Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, has traveled to France to meet with UNESCO officials, OECD senior government officials and other stakeholders to accelerate the follow-up actions to the Transforming Education Summit and the Secretary-General’s Financing for Development Agenda.
She will then continue to Switzerland to meet with Member States, the Chairs of the Governing Bodies and Executive Boards of Geneva - as well as Heads of Agencies based in Geneva – all of this to engage on the accelerated action needed for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the follow-up of the SDG summit.
After her travels to Switzerland, the Deputy Secretary-General will go to London to meet with senior Government officials there to discuss the lead-up to the Summit of the Future and reform of the UN development system.
At the invitation of the President of Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Deputy Secretary-General will head to Chile to address the ECOSOC Special Meeting entitled “The future of work: towards a productive, inclusive and sustainable global society, to strengthen input for the 2024 Summit of the Future” and she will also of course there meet with government officials in Chile.
We expect Amina Mohammed to be back in New York on 24 January.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Moving to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, our peacekeeping colleagues in the DRC continue to report violence against civilians by CODECO militia in Ituri province.
Peacekeepers responded to alerts and information they received over the past few days as part of its protection efforts. In Nya, close to Djugu territory in Ituri province, MONUSCO deployed a patrol to protect civilians, and support local leaders in negotiating the release of five persons abducted by the group. The Mission has also intervened in response to an attack against a position for the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) in Tcha, that’s about 30 kilometres north-east of Bunia. Peacekeepers are also continuing to protect civilians who sought refuge close to a MONUSCO temporary base in the Drodo area in Ituri.
As we informed you last week, our peacekeepers sent a patrol to the area in response to clashes between CODECO and Zaire militia. The situation is now reported calm.
ETHIOPIA
Turning to Ethiopia, somebody had asked me about Tigray yesterday… I’m answering your question. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is concerned at the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the north of the country, in the drought-affected regions including in Afar, Amhara, Tigray, and Oromia. Multiple and often overlapping crises have severely weakened people’s ability to cope with climate shocks such as drought – that leaves millions of people vulnerable to falling even further into severe need and destitution.
We, along with our partners, are supporting the Government in its efforts with extremely limited funding in a very challenging operating environment, particularly amid active hostilities in Amhara and Oromia. However, our humanitarian colleagues stress the need to scale up the response to support 4 million people in these regions with food aid, nutrition, water and sanitation as well as health services. They tell us that the main issue is lack of funding and insecurity.
Last year, between January and November, we and our humanitarian partners reached more than 12 million people with aid. The 2023 $4 billion Humanitarian Response Plan for Ethiopia was just one third funded, receiving $1.33 billion. The 2024 appeal should be shared shortly.
UKRAINE
Moving back north to Europe, our colleagues at OCHA tell us that ongoing attacks and hostilities across Ukraine in recent days have led to further deaths, damage and destruction of civilian infrastructure.
In both Odesa and Kharkiv, humanitarian organizations are providing hot meals and materials for emergency repairs and legal and psychosocial support to the residents who have been impacted by the continued barrage of hostilities.
Strikes overnight in the eastern city of Kharkiv, according to what national authorities are telling us, left scores of civilians injured, but we are supporting them.
SECURITY COUNCIL/CYPRUS
And as you know, this morning, Colin Stewart, the Secretary-General's Special Representative and Head of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus briefed the Security Council in closed consultations. He spoke to you at the stakeout not long ago.
SECURITY COUNCIL
I just want to flag an annual publication which I find of great use and that is our colleagues at the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs have released the “2023 Highlights of Security Council Practice.” That’s available on our website.
The Highlights Paper contains information about the work of the Council in 2023 - the meetings held, the missions conducted to the field, the items dealt with, the decisions adopted - as well as those that were not adopted, and there were a few of those last year, unfortunately, and the work of its subsidiary bodies. It’s a very good research tool I urge you to bookmark it.
HONOUR ROLL
Finally, money. Money means quiz. Food quiz. What do fermented shark, Jāni cheese, coconut fish, Hainanese chicken rice and rösti all have in common? They’re all from countries that have paid. So we thank Iceland, Latvia, Nauru, Singapore and Switzerland – all have joined the Honour Roll. We thank them all very much for taking the total to15.
