HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY STEPHANE DUJARRIC,
SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
FRIDAY, 7 JULY 2017
 
AT G20 SUMMIT, U.N. CHIEF CALLS ON LEADERS TO JOIN EFFORTS TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE, VIOLENT EXTREMISM

• The Secretary-General arrived this morning from Switzerland to Hamburg, Germany, where is attending the G20 summit.
• He took part in a working luncheon on global growth and trade, as well as a working session on sustainable development, climate and energy.
• Upon arrival, he said that he calls on G20 leaders to join the UN's efforts to combat climate change, violent extremism and other unprecedented challenges.
• The Secretary-General also had a bilateral meeting with President Recept Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
• He will also take part in G20 sessions tomorrow before traveling to Ukraine in the evening.
• Yesterday night, the Secretary-General spoke to the press at the end of the Conference on Cyprus in Crans-Montana.
• He said he was deeply sorry that despite the very strong commitment and the engagement of all the delegations and the different parties, the Conference on Cyprus was closed without an agreement being reached.

 

• And also from Hamburg, Mastercard and the World Food Programme (WFP) will announce, at the Global Citizen Festival Hamburg, a new commitment in their continued vision to reverse the cycle of hunger and poverty.
• Connecting Mastercard’s expertise in technology and digital innovation with WFP’s work, 100 Million Meals is a truly global initiative designed to raise significant funds and meals for those in need around the world.
• WFP’s Executive Director, David Beasley, said that over the years of the partnership, Mastercard has helped the organisation change the way it does business, reaching more people with a more efficient and agile approach.

 

• At the start of the G20 Summit, UNICEF warns that funding shortfalls are threatening education for millions of children caught up in conflicts or disasters.
• Of the $932 million needed this year for its education programmes in emergency countries, UNICEF has so far received recorded voluntary contributions of less than $115 million. 
• The funds are necessary to give 9.2 million children affected by humanitarian crises access to formal and non-formal basic education. 

 

• This morning at the High Level Event on Human Security, the Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed stressed the link between human security and the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
• She said the human security approach is “instrumental to sustainable development, inclusive peace, justice and the well-being and dignity of all people” and she added that it can help to find solutions that address the root causes of crises.
• On Sunday, 9 July 2017, the Deputy Secretary-General will depart New York for London where she will attend the Family Planning Summit 2020.  She will deliver the first lecture in the Late Dr Babatunde Osotimehin Lecture Series on 10 July.  She will also attend high-level meetings with top UK and Canadian Government officials.
• On 11 July, she will deliver the opening remarks at the Family Planning Summit.  Thereafter, she will have more high-level meetings on the She Decides initiative and also on the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin that will focus on empowering women and youth.  Finally, she will meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
• The Deputy Secretary-General will return to New York on 12 July 2017.

 

• The Chiefs of Defense Conference started this morning and will wrap up around 4.30 this afternoon.
• In a video message welcoming the participants, the Secretary-General said Chiefs of Defense are critical to ensuring that peacekeeping remains modern and efficient.
• He also urged actions to deploy more women – and to help integrate a gender-sensitive perspective in fostering peace.  
• When we have greater gender balance in our forces, we boost our protection outreach – and we reduce the chances of sexual exploitation and abuse, he stressed.
• In his own remarks, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said we are now working towards realizing the Secretary-General’s vision of peacekeeping as a tailored, agile, and adaptable tool – one which blends the right skills and capabilities in response to the specific needs on the ground, taking into account the context of a reduction of its budget.
• The strength of peacekeeping operations lies in its dynamism, he added. The future may involve an entirely new model that coexists with older generations of operations and ultimately, UN peacekeeping will do what it has done since its creation in 1948: adapt.

 

• In Mosul, Iraq, our colleagues at the IOM have temporarily suspended certain activities in the Qayara’s air strip emergency site and the Haj Ali camp, due to security concerns.
• The decision was taken yesterday following a temporary decline in the security environment in Qayara District, due to sporadic violence, including exchanges of gunfire. Both emergency sites host over 79,000 displaced Iraqis. IOM said the situation will be reviewed on Sunday 09 July.

 

• A study on the Cost of Hunger in Africa published today reveals that the economic toll of malnutrition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reaches one billion dollars a year, equivalent to as much as 4.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the country.
• The study shows that the losses are incurred each year through increased healthcare costs, additional burdens to the education system and reduced workforce productivity.
• According to the report, the DRC could save up to US$383 million dollars by 2025 if the prevalence of underweight children is reduced from 11 to 5 percent and if stunting (which means low growth for age) is reduced from 43 to 10 per cent.
• The Cost of Hunger in Africa study has so far been conducted in 11 countries, with an estimated annual loss associated with child undernutrition equivalent to between 1.9 percent and 16.5 percent of the GDP.
• Results of recently undertaken studies are due to be released soon in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Similar studies are being planned for Mali and Mauritania.
• Still on the DRC, our humanitarian colleagues warn that despite a dramatic increase in humanitarian needs in 2017, the Humanitarian Response Plan, which requires US$ 748 million, remains only 25 per cent funded.
• For its part, the emergency appeal which was launched in April for the Kasai crisis has to date only received 11 per cent.
• The number of internally displaced people in the country has increased by 60 per cent to 3.7 million, making DRC the African country that is most affected by internal displacement.
• Besides malnutrition, the country is also going through outbreaks of cholera, measles and yellow fever, while an outbreak of Ebola was just recently declared over.

 

• The UN Migration Agency (IOM) reports that migrant arrivals to Europe by sea have now surpassed the 100,000 figure this year.
• Of the estimated 101,000 migrants and refugees that have entered the continent, 85 per cent arrived in Italy and the remainder arrived in Greece, Cyprus and Spain.
• Some 2,300 people have died making the journey towards Europe this year, a decrease from the 2,963 fatalities in 2016. However, IOM noted that this is the fourth consecutive year that migrant deaths on the Mediterranean Sea have exceeded 2,000.

 

• The El Salvador dialogue process facilitated by the United Nations enters a new, technical phase today.
• This new phase is founded on the consultations conducted by Special Envoy of the Secretary-General Benito Andión, whose mandate has now concluded. We would like to express our gratitude to Special Envoy Andión for all his efforts and dedication during his tenure.    
• The United Nations will continue to support this process through the deployment of a technical team and the Secretary-General’s good offices will remain available and could resume once conditions for a political dialogue are ripe.

 

• The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has concluded his first visit to Myanmar by appealing for inclusive and sustainable solutions to protracted displacement and statelessness.
• During his visit, Grandi met with Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other Senior Government officials to discuss humanitarian access in Kachin and Rakhine states, where some 100,000 and 120,000 people respectively have been living for more than five years in camps for internally displaced people.
• While in Rakhine state, the High Commissioner met with some of the displaced, listening to their safety and livelihood concerns.  He said the issues they are facing are complex issues but not intractable.
• A crucial first step is to pursue freedom of movement and access to services and livelihoods for all. Accelerated pathways to citizenship are also part of the solution, as are efforts to tackle exclusion and poverty, he said.

 

• Our colleagues at the World Meteorological Organization inform us that over the past two months, high temperatures have continued as part of an extended spell of “exceptional global warmth” that has lasted since mid-2015. Average surface air temperatures were the second hottest on record, after June 2016. In Iran, Iraq and Kuwait, for example, a heatwave has driven temperatures in excess of 50°C.
• In addition to high temperatures, extreme weather affected many different parts of the world in June and early July. Australia had its second driest June on record, China experienced torrential rainfall which caused considerable economic losses and transport disruption, and parts of Russia and Siberia experienced an unusually cold June.
• More details are available on the WMO website.

 

• The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concern for eight Turkish human rights defenders and two international experts detained on the Büyükada Island near Istanbul.
• Human rights defenders must not be silenced, they said, urging the Turkish Government to ensure that they can carry out their legitimate work in a safe and enabling environment without fear.
• The High Commissioner is also concerned at reports that Liu Xiaobo’s health has seriously deteriorated over the past 24 hours. Amid these latest reports, they say they believe the UN should be granted access to both Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia.
• Regarding Cambodia, they welcome the release on bail of five Cambodian human rights defenders, who had been in pre-trial detention since April 2016; and they equally welcome the dropping of all legal proceedings against a member of their own staff, Mr. Soen Sally, who had been charged in the same case. 
• However, these positive developments come at a time when the environment for human rights defenders and civil society organizations in Cambodia is still giving rise to considerable concern, they say.
   

• Data from 77 countries shows that antibiotic resistance is making gonorrhoea – a common sexually-transmitted infection – much harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat.
• The World Health Organization reports widespread resistance to older and cheaper antibiotics. Some countries – particularly high-income ones, where surveillance is best – are finding cases of the infection that are untreatable by all known antibiotics.
• Each year, an estimated 78 million people are infected with gonorrhoea, whose complications disproportionally affect women.
• WHO also expressed concern that the Research and Development pipeline for gonorrhoea is relatively empty, with only 3 new candidate drugs in various stages of clinical development.

 

• Today, the Secretary-General is announcing the appointment of Martha Helena Lopez of Colombia as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management. She will succeed Carole Wainaina of Kenya, to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for her commitment and dedicated service to the Organization.
• Ms. Lopez brings a wealth of senior-level international experience in human resources management. Since 2015, she has served as Human Resources Director at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).  We have more on her career in a biographical note in my office.

 

• My guest at noon on Monday will be WU Hongbo, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). He will discuss the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

BOLIVIA PAYS ITS BUDGET DUES

• We welcome Bolivia to the Honour Roll, as it has paid its regular budget dues in full. The total now stands at 111.