HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY STEPHANE DUJARRIC
SPOKESPERSON FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
FRIDAY, 10 JANUARY 2025
Climate
The World Meteorological Organization today confirmed that the year that just passed -2024- was the warmest year on record, and that it is at about 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels.
This is based on six various international datasets. It also said that the past ten years, from 2015 to 2024, were the ten warmest years on record.
The Secretary-General said that today’s assessment makes it clear that global heating is a cold, hard fact, adding that governments must deliver new national climate action plans this year to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5°C and support the most vulnerable as well as deal with the devastating climate impacts.
That statement was shared with you earlier today.
Deputy Secretary-General
The Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed, is in Nigeria, in Abuja, the capital city of that country.
She met today with the President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as well as with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development [Prof. Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda]. They discussed Nigeria’s role in regional cooperation, peacebuilding and advancing inclusive development.
She also met with Dr. Omar Touray, the President of the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States – better known by its acronym ECOWAS – to discuss recent developments, regional peace and security dynamics, as well as sustainable development in the Sahel.
Yesterday, she also met with the UN Country Team and discussed how to strengthen the United Nations’ work in Nigeria for greater impact and delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals. Ms. Mohammed also had discussions with the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy [Wale Edun]. They discussed the country’s ongoing economic reforms.
Leonardo Santos Simão, the Head of our Office for West Africa and the Sahel, is also in Nigeria and accompanied Ms. Mohammed for parts of her programme.
She will return to New York on Sunday.
Sudan
Today, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is sounding the alarm, saying that an estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition this year in Sudan.
Of these children, over 700,000 will likely suffer from severe acute malnutrition.
Sudan, as you know, has the world’s largest child displacement crisis, with five million children displaced because of the hostilities. Most of these children leave with their families with only the clothes on their bodies. Mothers often walk for days, sometimes up to 20 days, to reach a camp, looking for safety, looking for food and just looking for basic shelter.
And as the conflict rages on, families and communities trapped in the middle of it and in hard-to-reach areas are continuing to bear the brunt of the violence and the suffering.
The lack of access to sufficient food and basic services in these hard-to-reach areas inside Sudan is likely to swell and the risk of destitution and death increases.
UNICEF, in collaboration with humanitarian partners, will continue to do its utmost to deliver safe and clean water and integrated health and nutrition services, including immunization, treatment of childhood illnesses, as well as do whatever they can management of acute malnutrition in children.
And as you know, famine conditions are currently present in Zamzam, Al Salam, and Abu Shouk camps for internally displaced people, as well as the western Nuba Mountains of Sudan. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) committee has projected that famine could spread to five additional regions of Sudan, including El Fasher, by the middle of this year, with 17 other areas at risk unless urgent intervention is managed.
Immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access is essential in order for us and our partners to deliver humanitarian assistance.
And we continue to urge governments to prioritise funding, ensure safe relief routes, and press all parties involved to just stop fighting.
Syria
Moving to Syria. Our Special Envoy, Geir Pedersen, will travel to Riyadh in the Kingdom Saudi Arabia this weekend to engage with senior officials there. He continues to emphasize the importance of an inclusive, Syrian-led, and Syrian-owned process, supported by the international community.
Meanwhile, his Deputy, Najat Rochdi, remains in Damascus, where she is actively engaging with a broad range of interlocutors as part of our ongoing outreach efforts.
On the humanitarian front, our humanitarian coordination colleagues tell us that a convoy of 23 trucks carrying about 200 metric tonnes of medical, health, hygiene and education supplies, provided by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, crossed from Türkiye through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing into Idlib. This is the first UN cross-border aid delivery of the year crossing from Türkiye.
The supplies will support at least half a million human beings, enable 8,000 emergency surgical procedures, and provide enough medication to treat infections and support mental health for about 10,000 people for the next three months.
We also continue to conduct regular cross-border missions from Türkiye to Syria, through other points, with 13 missions having taken place over the past five days, including roads and civilian infrastructure assessments. Our staff has also met with people to assess humanitarian efforts and needs in different locations in the country.
We and our partners continue to support the response across the country as security and logistical conditions permit. However, the needs are massive and now, as the winter season is upon us, the humanitarian situation is even more dire especially for the millions of people who remain displaced in the country.
More than 620,000 people were forced to flee their homes in November and December, on top of the over 7 million people who had previously been displaced.
We call on donors to support the humanitarian response, especially during this transition period.
Lebanon
Turning to Lebanon, the Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, today announced a $30 million allocation from the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund to support the response in the country.
The funds will enable our partners, including local NGOs and community-based organizations, to deliver assistance in the areas of food security, shelter, nutrition, protection, healthcare, water and sanitation, as well as education.
Mr. Riza said that the new allocation will provide a vital lifeline, enabling support to both those returning to damaged infrastructure and those who remain displaced.
OPT
Turning to the situation in Gaza, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs tells us that Israeli authorities continue to deny UN-led efforts to reach [North] Gaza governorate with vital aid. This includes our most recent attempt today.
Across the Gaza Strip yesterday, only 10 out of the 21 UN planned humanitarian movements were facilitated by the Israeli authorities. Seven were denied outright, three were impeded, and one was cancelled due to security and logistical challenges.
Meanwhile, OCHA is deeply concerned about the impact that dwindling fuel supplies are having on essential services in Gaza. Palestinian telecommunication providers are now warning that their services may start to shut down tomorrow due to fuel shortages, which they need to run the generators for their equipment.
The World Health Organization said today that Al Awda Hospital – which is, as you know, the last partially functioning hospital in North Gaza governorate – is critically low on fuel and essential medical supplies.
WHO has been working to access Al Awda to resupply it and to assess the situation at Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is completely out of service. However, damaged roads – as well as insufficient facilitation of access by the Israeli authorities – has made it impossible to safely reach those facilities. Our WHO colleagues urgently call for immediate action to make roads passable and to facilitate access to Al Awda [Hospital] to keep it up and running.
And turning to the West Bank, new reporting from OCHA indicates a pretty violent picture. In the first week of this year, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians, including a child, and injured 38 others across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, armed Palestinians shot and killed three Israeli settlers and injured eight others near Qalqiliya.
OCHA also tells us that during the first week of the year, Israeli settlers injured 18 Palestinians across the West Bank, including nine in Silwad village in Ramallah governorate. Meanwhile, more than 50 Palestinians in the West Bank were displaced by home demolitions, the majority in Silwan in East Jerusalem.
We also have an update on the impact of the operation by Palestinian security forces in the Jenin refugee camp, where those forces have clashed with armed Palestinians for more than a month. OCHA says that since the operation began, access to the camp has been heavily restricted.
UNRWA estimates that some 3,400 people remain in the Jenin camp, in dire conditions – and more than 2,000 families have been forced to relocate to Jenin city.
OCHA mobilized partners to respond to the needs of the affected families both inside and outside the camp.
Myanmar
In Myanmar, the Humanitarian Coordinator ad interim, Marcoluigi Corsi, said today that the humanitarian community is deeply alarmed by recent reports of civilian casualties in Rakhine State.
On Wednesday, an aerial attack in Kyauk Nima Village reportedly killed over 40 civilians, including children and women, and injured more than 20 people. 500 homes were allegedly destroyed.
We reiterate our call on all parties to the conflict to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians, including humanitarian workers, as well as hospitals, schools and humanitarian assets. We also stress the need to facilitate unimpeded humanitarian access to the most vulnerable people.
Venezuela
The Secretary-General continues to follow the situation in Venezuela with great concern.
A peaceful way out of the political crisis requires full respect for human rights, including the right to freedom of expression and to hold opinions without any interference, and to peaceful assembly.
The Secretary-General strongly condemns the detention of a large number of persons, including opposition figures, journalists and human rights defenders, since the 28 July presidential election. He urges the authorities to guarantee and respect their human rights and to release all the people who have been arbitrarily detained.
Honour Roll
We have another welcome member of the Honour Roll.
We thank very much our friends in Vaduz for taking Liechtenstein to become the 6th Member State to pay its dues for 2025.
