GUESTS TOMORROW
We will have a guest tomorrow at the briefing and that will be Kanni Wignaraja, the Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific of the UN Development Programme (UNDP). She will be here in person. She will also be joined by the UNDP Resident Representative for Afghanistan, who is in Kabul, Stephen Rodriques, and they will be talking about the socioeconomic situation in Afghanistan, Kanni has just returned from there.
AFGHANISTAN
Also on Afghanistan, you heard the Security Council briefing from Roza Otunbayeva, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative. She spoke to you as well at the stakeout, so I won’t go back into all that she told you and the Council.
DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL
Our Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, arrived in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates earlier today.
Upon her arrival, she held a number of bilateral meetings with senior Government officials, including with the Minister of State for Financial Affairs, Mohamed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, and the Minister of State for International Cooperation, Reem Bint Ebrahim Al Hashimy, as well as the President of COP28 Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber.
In her meetings, Ms. Mohammed stressed the importance of accelerating action for the Sustainable Development Goals. She acknowledged the UAE's second Voluntary National Review. Furthermore, Ms. Mohammed congratulated the country on a successful delivery of the ‘UAE consensus’ at COP28, despite a challenging geopolitical situation.
She then encouraged the UAE to leverage commitments made to address the triple planetary crisis.
Yesterday, Ms. Mohammed was in Lebanon. She attended, together with Under-Secretary-General Guy Ryder, the Arab Regional Forum on Sustainable Development. She also had a meeting with the acting Prime Minister, Mr. Mikati of Lebanon and the Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib.
She is departing UAE very shortly and coming back here.
LEBANON
Staying in Lebanon, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs tell us that they are deeply concerned about the continuing hostilities affecting civilians and civilian infrastructure along the Blue Line and beyond.
This includes an Israeli airstrike on a health centre in Odaisseh, in the south of Lebanon on 4 March. Three volunteer paramedics were killed. The World Health Organization condemned this incident, urging an immediate halt to attacks on civilians and health care in Lebanon.
WHO reported that, since 7 October 2023, seven attacks on health care facilities in Lebanon have been reported, resulting in seven deaths.
Our OCHA colleagues in Lebanon warn that the humanitarian situation on the south of the country remains dire, with more than 90,000 people internally displaced and at least 42 civilian casualties reported because of the fighting.
SYRIA
A quick update on neighboring Syria, where the UN Development Programme with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees today launched the 2024 Regional Strategic Overview of the Refugee and Resilience Plan for the Syria crisis. This is the main regional platform to support Syrian refugees and their host communities. For this year, our partners estimate that $4.9 billion is required to respond to the priority needs of vulnerable populations and institutions impacted by the Syria crisis in Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq.
The urgent needs of more than 6.1 million Syrian refugees and 6.8 million host community members are increasingly going unmet, the two agencies warned, and underfunding would leave 450,000 refugees without education. Health gaps could pose threats to refugees, while thousands of vulnerable households would lose food assistance.
HAITI
Today, the Security Council will hold a private meeting on Haiti to discuss the alarming escalation in gang violence. The head of our mission there, Maria Isabel Salvador, will brief Council members.
The situation in Port-au-Prince remains extremely fragile as sporadic attacks have continued and all flights in and out of Haiti remain cancelled.
The Secretary-General reiterates the need for urgent action, including financing for the Multinational Security Support mission, to tackle the security needs of the people of Haiti.
The Secretary-General reiterates his call on the Government of Haiti and all Haitian stakeholders to set aside their differences and advance a common path towards the restoration of democratic institutions.
And our colleagues who focus on humanitarian affairs say that thousands of civilians continue to be caught up in the violence in the capital Port-au-Prince and beyond.
The majority of the 15,000 newly displaced people we mentioned yesterday are women and children.
Displaced families are traumatized. Access to food, healthcare, water and hygiene facilities, and psychological support are among the most urgent needs for civilians in Port-au-Prince.
As we mentioned yesterday, we and our humanitarian partners are mobilized and have been delivering emergency aid, but the escalating violence is severely disrupting operations.
Our humanitarian colleagues also advised they’re concerned about the impact of the violence on hospitals, health centres and schools in Port-au-Prince, and some other neighbouring areas in Haiti.
Health infrastructure is on the brink of collapse. Port-au-Prince’s main public hospital has closed due to violence and the inability of staff to actually get to the hospital to support the people who need help. The main hospitals receiving wounded civilians are overloaded, partly due to the number injured. There is an urgent need for blood products in the country. In a positive development, Médicins Sans Frontières announced yesterday that they managed to open another health centre in Carrefour, which is a neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince..
Humanitarian organizations need unhindered access to the most vulnerable people now.
SUDAN
Moving to Sudan, I can tell you that we welcome the Government’s decision to allow aid in through several border crossings and to allow for more humanitarian flights into Sudan. In a post on social media, our Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, stressed that it is critical to ensure cross-border aid to the country, and underscored that communities caught behind conflict lines need more – saying that of course time is of the essence.
Earlier today, in a statement, the World Food Programme warned that the country’s current round of hostilities could trigger the world’s largest hunger crisis.
More than 25 million people across Sudan – as well as in South Sudan and Chad, which are hosting people who have fled the fighting – are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food insecurity. And just to flag that the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, Cindy McCain, is currently visiting transit camps in South Sudan, where almost 600,000 people have crossed from Sudan in the past 10 months.
SOUTH SUDAN
And, staying on South Sudan, yesterday, our peacekeeping mission in the country issued a statement condemning the killing of one of their South Sudanese colleagues in Abiemnhom, close to the border with Warrap State and Abyei.
Charles Kiir Gone served with the peacekeeping mission in Wau. He was reportedly killed during an attack by armed men on a relative's home in Abiemnhom, where he was staying.
The Mission extends its deepest condolences to his friends and family and calls on local and State authorities to immediately investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
BOLIVIA
I have an update from Bolivia, where our team is supporting authorities tackle massive floods which have been worsened by the El Niño phenomenon and climate change.
Acting Resident Coordinator, Rafael Ramirez, coordinated swift support for affected areas, where over 17,000 children are affected by school closures. Our team is further assessing the impacts on water, sanitation, education, health, and shelter.
Additionally, the UN Emergency Team is working with authorities in Oruro, another flooded city. Our team on the ground remains committed to supporting authorities, mobilizing resources, and providing immediate and long-term assistance to help this emergency.
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
Finally, one more Member State, one more quiz. This country in East Africa which is home to Lac Assal, a crater lake in the centre of the country, that is 10 times saltier than the sea, which makes it the second saltiest body of water in the world after the Don Juan Pond in Antarctica. Lac Assal – at 509 feet below sea level - is also the lowest point in the African continent.
No, Djibouti. We thank our friends in Djibouti. We are up to 76 fully paid-up Member States.
