Bangladesh

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message on the joint response plan for the Rohingya refugee crisis, in Geneva today:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is increasingly alarmed at the plight of thousands of Central African refugees who have fled to southern Chad since late 2017.  The influx is the biggest since 2014, and is overwhelming the ability of humanitarian agencies to respond.

Humanitarian operations in Iraq are contracting in 2018 versus last year, when 6.2 million people were targeted with assistance.  The 2018 humanitarian response plan, launched on 6 March, seeks $569 million to assist 3.4 million highly vulnerable people struggling in the aftermath of the conflict with Da’esh.

The Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index for February found that rising world prices for staple grains and dairy products more than offset lower prices for vegetable oils, leading global food commodity prices up 1.1 per cent.  FAO also lowered projections for global wheat harvests this year.

The United Nations takes note of the recent decision by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Desalegn, to resign, to “allow further political reforms to take place in the country aimed at widening democratic space”.

More than five months since the start of the violence that forced 688,000 Rohingya to flee Myanmar into Bangladesh, a dangerous new crisis loomed, while restrictions on humanitarian access to the conflict areas posed a serious concern, the Security Council heard today, as it was briefed on the most recent developments in the region.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today that ongoing violence in the Central African Republic has pushed forced displacement to the highest levels since the start of the crisis in 2013.  Data as of the end of December show that 688,700 people were displaced internally.

United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock today approved the largest-ever allocation by the Central Emergency Response Fund — $50 million — to rapidly bolster aid for Yemen.  The humanitarian situation there has deteriorated despite recent progress in opening key Red Sea ports to food and fuel shipments.

The United Nations refugee agency evacuated 74 refugees, mostly children and women, from Libya to Niger.  In the Central African Republic, voluntary repatriation of Sudanese refugees has begun; since Tuesday, 230 refugees have arrived in Sudan.  Agency-chartered flights will bring some 1,500 refugees home by the end of 2017.

Describing “the most heartbreaking and horrific” accounts of sexual atrocities against girls and women in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the Special Representative of the Secretary‑General for Sexual Violence in Conflict told the Security Council today that every woman or girl she had spoken with had either endured brutal assault or had witnessed sexual violence, including seeing women literally being raped to death.