The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from New York in the early hours of Sunday, 1 July. He was taking part in a joint visit to the country with the President of the World Bank Group, Dr. Jim Yong Kim.
The latest report issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization warns today that time is running out for the world’s forests, whose total area is shrinking every day. Forests provide around 20 per cent of income for rural households in developing countries and fuel for cooking and heating for 1 in every 3 people around the world.
In Syria, intense air and ground‑based strikes continuing over the weekend in multiple areas in Dara’a Governorate have led to the largest displacement — an estimated 270,000 people — since the conflict began in 2011, according to our humanitarian colleagues.
As hostilities escalate in southern Syria, civilian deaths continue to be reported and up to 66,000 people have now been displaced. Many who fled towards the Jordanian border remain stranded in the desert with little access to humanitarian help. Planned aid convoys will proceed as soon as the security situation allows.
The Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process briefed the Security Council this morning and said that settlement activity has continued in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He reiterated that all settlement activity is illegal under international law.
The Human Rights Office published the United Nations first-ever report on the human rights situation in Kashmir today, which states that past and ongoing human rights abuses must be urgently addressed, and details violations committed by security forces with impunity.
Heavy rains marking the start of the monsoon season in Bangladesh have impacted nearly 2,500 families in the Rohingya refugee settlements in the Cox’s Bazar district, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is continuing aid distribution and prepositioning more supplies.
In a report published today, the United Nations Human Rights Office and the United Nations Support Mission in Libya say violence continues to have a devastating impact on health care in the country with hospitals and other medical facilities bombed, shelled and looted; medical personnel targeted; and patients attacked.
A peacekeeper from the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) was killed and eight others injured this morning in the southern part of the country. The contingent from Mauritania was escorting a convoy to the town of Alindao when it was attacked by presumed members of the anti-Balaka.
Recounting the haunting stories of Rohingya refugees they met during a recent mission to Bangladesh and Myanmar, Security Council members today described mass rapes, attacks on children and the razing of entire villages, stressing that the visit had “awakened their collective conscience” into robust and concerted action.
