SECRETARY-GENERAL
The Secretary-General will be travelling over the weekend. He’ll be going to Geneva where on Monday morning, he will deliver remarks at the opening of the 49th regular session of the Human Rights Council.
Later, he will take part in a press conference to launch the new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - titled “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.”
While in Geneva, the he will also have a series bilateral meetings. We expect him back here on Monday afternoon.
UKRAINE
As announced by the Secretary-General yesterday, the United Nations has allocated $20 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to immediately scale up life-saving humanitarian assistance and protection to civilians in Ukraine following the recent increase in hostilities.
The allocation will support health care, shelter, food, and water and sanitation to the most vulnerable people affected by the conflict, including women and girls, the elderly and the displaced.
The funds will also support the prevention of gender-based violence and other protection-related services, as well as education, logistics and telecommunications.
For its part, today, the UN Human Rights Office said that it is gravely concerned about developments over the course of the day yesterday and overnight in Ukraine, and that it is receiving increasing reports of civilian casualties.
The Human Rights Office is also disturbed by the multiple arbitrary arrests of demonstrators in Russia who were protesting against war yesterday. It understands that more than 1,800 protesters were arrested and said that it is unclear whether some have now been released.
According to the Human Rights Office, there are verified reports of at least 127 civilian casualties, including 25 killed and 102 injured due to shelling and other forms of conflict. Of the 127, 114 were reported in Government-controlled territories in Donetsk, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Luhansk regions.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission remains in Ukraine and will continue to closely monitor and report on the situation.
The UN Refugee Agency said that there are reports of substantial movement in Ukraine, with an estimated 100,000 people displaced inside the country and several thousands who have crossed international borders. UNHCR estimates that up to 4 million people may flee Ukraine to neighboring countries if the situation escalates further.
The UN Refugee Agency is present in both Ukraine and neighboring countries ready to support any efforts to help forcibly displaced people.
The World Health Organization today said that it is concerned for the health of the people of Ukraine and expressed fear that the escalating crisis may impact health systems. WHO is releasing $3.5 million from the contingency fund for emergencies to procure medical supplies for Ukraine.
WHO warned that the Omicron variant of the COVID virus exists in Ukraine and that there are a high number of COVID cases across the country. The World Health Organization is concern about the impact of the conflict on vaccination, as well as the availability of medicine, electricity and water.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the head of our department of our Peacekeeping Operations, is in the Central African Republic today, where he began a four-day visit.
He is expected to meet a number of local leaders, including the President Faustin Archange Touadéra. He will also meet civil society representatives and people directly affected by insecurity in the country.
As you may have seen, four of our peacekeeping colleagues arrested last Friday were released yesterday.
Mankeur Ndiaye, the head of the UN Mission, reiterated that the UN will continue to work to ensure the protection of our personnel and assets in all circumstances. And we’re happy they’ve been released.
YEMEN
On Yemen, we want to reiterate our concern about the grave situation in the country, including the impact of the ongoing conflict, which is causing civilian casualties on a daily basis.
More than 23,000 people have been displaced since the start of the year, most of them in Hudaydah, Marib, Shabwah and Taiz governorates. They join more than four million men, women and children who have been displaced across Yemen since the latest escalation got underway in 2015.
Aid agencies are doing everything they can to respond to people’s needs, but acute funding shortages are threatening the flow of humanitarian assistance.
At the start of this year, two-thirds of major UN aid programmes had already been forced to reduce or close due to lack of cash. Further cuts are on the horizon if funding is not received. As it is, food rations have already been cut by half for eight million people. Those people may soon stop receiving food assistance from the UN altogether.
We call on donors to pledge generously at a high-level pledging conference for Yemen, which is scheduled for 16 March, co-hosted by ourselves and the Governments of Sweden and Switzerland. We also urge donors to commit funds before the pledging conference to avoid major disruptions in our humanitarian operations.
AFGHANISTAN
In Afghanistan, as we had told you, a group of eight senior emergency experts from UN agencies and international non-governmental organizations have been in the country. Today they called for urgent support to life-saving humanitarian action in Afghanistan after a five-day mission to the country. The emergency experts said they witnessed an enormity of human suffering in Afghanistan, but that they also saw humanitarian organizations able to scale up operations despite massive operational constraints, including the ongoing banking and liquidity crisis.
According to our humanitarian colleagues, more than 24 million people, that represents 59 per cent of the Afghan population, now require lifesaving assistance in the country. That is a staggering 30 per cent increase since 2021.
The Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan this year, which is the largest humanitarian appeal ever launched for a single country calls for $4.44 billion to provide aid to over 22 million people. It’s only 13 per cent funded.
AFGHANISTAN/CHILDREN
The head of UNICEF, Catherine Russell, just concluded a three-day trip to Afghanistan.
In a statement, Ms. Russell noted that in the streets of Kabul, scores of very young children dart in and out of traffic, chasing cars and asking for money. In a hospital in Kandahar, she saw emaciated babies lie motionless - two to a bed - too weak to even cry amid a spike in cases of severe acute malnutrition.
ETHIOPIA
The conflict in the Afar region continues to cause displacement which worsens humanitarian needs. Regional authorities estimate that hundreds of thousands have been displaced by fighting in recent months, including some 200,000 people living in areas that are hard for humanitarian workers to reach.
The humanitarian response is scaling up to accessible areas in Afar but still remains far too insufficient. Assessments have found priority needs for food, protection for children, and health.
Humanitarian assistance also continues in Amhara region. More than 6.8 million people have received food assistance in the past two months, including over 230,000 people have been assisted by ourselves and NGOs in the past week. Some areas near the boundary with Tigray, however, remain inaccessible for humanitarians.
In the Tigray region itself, we along with our humanitarian partners continue to scale back operations due to a lack of supplies, lack fuel, lack of cash. No relief convoys have reached Tigray since mid-December and we are now at the end of February.
During the past week, we along with our partners airlifted some 47 metric tonnes of medical supplies to Tigray, including antibiotics and medicines for malaria and diabetes.
But as you know airlifts cannot replace truck convoys in terms of volume and cost.
However, a lack of fuel remains a major setback in Tigray, as an obstacle for dispatching supplies to health facilities throughout the region.
SYRIA
Geir Pedersen, our Envoy for Syria, briefed the Security Council on that country this morning. He said that militarily, front lines remain unshifted, but we still see all the signs of an ongoing hot conflict. Any of a number of flashpoints could ignite a broader conflagration, he warned.
Mr. Pedersen said we have now set a date for convening the 7th session of the Small Body of the Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated Constitutional Committee, and that is 21 March.
Joyce Msuya, the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, also briefed the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria. She said that the world is failing the people of Syria. Syria now ranks as one of the world’s ten most food-insecure countries, forcing families to pull children out of school or use child marriage as a coping strategy.
MYANMAR
UNICEF is working to scale up delivery of clean drinking water for the most vulnerable children in Myanmar, where three million children lack access to a safe water supply.
Since the start of the year, UNICEF, working closely with partners, has delivered clean drinking water to 131,590 conflict-affected people, including in hard-to-reach areas of Rakhine, northern Shan, Kachin, Yangon, Kayah and Chin.
UNICEF is calling for urgent, expanded support and resources to scale up these lifesaving efforts in Myanmar.
VIET NAM
In Viet Nam, the UN team, led by the acting Resident Coordinator Rana Flowers, continues to support authorities’ health and socio-economic response and recovery efforts due to pandemic. The team and authorities have trained healthcare workers, provided health and nutrition services for pregnant women, mothers and their children; provided water, sanitation and hygiene supplies to schools and health centres. The team has also supported the economic recovery of women’s micro and small enterprises.
Viet Nam has achieved the goal of vaccinating 100 per cent of the targeted population – 18 years and above. Of all vaccines landing in Viet Nam, over 51 million doses were received through the COVAX Facility.
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
Monaco has now paid its budget dues in full bringing up the total number of fully paid-up Member States to 62.
