The United Nations Resident Coordinator’s team in Brazil is supporting the state of Amazonas in tackling latest surge of COVID-19. The United Nations Children’s Fund delivered 250 hygiene kits and food baskets, while the International Organization for Migration is working to mitigate transmission in indigenous and riverside communities.
A new United Nations Children’s Fund report shows that 320,000 children and young people under the age of 20 were infected with HIV in 2019 – about one every 100 seconds, bringing the total number of children living with HIV to 2.8 million. About half of children worldwide had access to life-saving treatment; nearly 100,000 children died of AIDS.
The following statement was issued by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:
There has been a dramatic rise in major storms, drought, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events over the last 20 years, which have claimed 1.23 million lives, impacted 4.2 billion people and caused almost $3 trillion in global economic losses, according to a report published today by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
The Nobel Committee has awarded this year’s Peace Prize to the United Nation World Food Programme (WFP). The Secretary-General congratulates David Beasley, WFP’s Executive Director, as well as the agency’s entire staff. The Programme is on the frontlines of food insecurity, serving the most vulnerable of the world.
The Human Rights Council held an urgent debate on conditions in Belarus, with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement, noting the continuation of mass demonstrations and expressing alarm over hundreds of claims of torture and ill treatment while in police custody. She urged authorities to facilitate independent, prompt and impartial investigations.
A survey by the United Nations Children’s Fund found that 535,500 children in Burkina Faso under five years old are acutely malnourished, including 156,000 who suffer from severe acute malnutrition and are at imminent risk of death. Community health workers have been mobilized to screen and treat children in the most remote areas.
In Mali, human rights officials from the United Nations peacekeeping mission have gained access to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and other detainees held by the mutineers since Tuesday. The Mission continues to closely monitor the situation and reports that Bamako remains relatively calm with no major security incidents.
The Beirut port is temporarily operational, with nearly 9,000 containers unloaded between 11 and 18 August, including 1,000 tons of goods such as iron and wheat. The High Commissioner for Refugees is providing psychosocial support, emergency help cash and shelter kits, one of several United Nations agencies to offer emergency assistance.
There is a real danger that the global health crisis will create a COVID-19 generation who lose out on schooling and see their opportunities permanently damaged, warned Gordon Brown, Special Envoy on Global Education, noting that an estimated 30 million children may never return to school, according to UNESCO.
Exceptional and prolonged heat in Siberia has fuelled devastating Arctic fires, the World Meteorological Organization said today, noting that temperatures in Siberia again topped 30°C this week. The heat will influence weather and climate in lower latitudes, where hundreds of millions of people live, it warned.
In June, 921,000 people were forced to leave Burkina Faso, making it the site of one of the world’s fastest-growing displacement crises. Increased insecurity has also made humanitarian access more difficult, with the number of people in need of assistance jumping to 2.9 million people, from 2.2 million in January.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has launched an $186 million appeal to provide lifesaving protection and assistance to refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees and host communities in the Central Sahel, The number of displaced in Burkina Faso has more than quadrupled in the past year.
Some 50 people died in three attacks in Burkina Faso’s northern regions — the Sahel, North, Centre-North and East — marking the deadliest violence since March, when 43 civilians were killed during two attacks on northern villages. Rising insecurity is making it difficult to reach the 2.2 million people in need of aid throughout the country.
Today the World Food Programme announced that the United Arab Emirates will dedicate three aircraft until the end of 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic response, helping the World Health Organization and the global humanitarian community transport life-saving cargo and personnel to more than 100 countries in need.
A new report by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) shows that as of 6 April, 96 per cent of all worldwide destinations have introduced travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of jobs could be lost in the sector.
The Secretary-General addressed the Group of 20 virtual summit on the COVID-19 pandemic, stressing that transmission of the virus must be suppressed as quickly as possible through a coordinated response mechanism guided by the World Health Organization (WHO).
An estimated 14,000 people in Burkina Faso have fled their homes in the past 17 days due to recent violence, bringing the number of internally displaced to 780,000, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports. It is increasing emergency supplies and protection for affected populations.
The border area of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has become the epicentre of a fast-growing crisis marked by unprecedented levels of armed violence, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says. Armed assailants have forced more than 3,600 schools and 241 health centres in those countries to close.
Almost 300,000 people in Burkina Faso have been forced to flee their homes since last December and nearly 766,000 in total are displaced as of today. More than half the internally displaced have inadequate shelter or none at all, and $10 million has been allocated from the Central Emergency Fund to help them.
