Brazil

The Education Cannot Wait Fund, which promotes education in emergencies, announced $23 million in grants to support vulnerable girls and boys facing the COVID-19 pandemic in 26 crisis-affected countries.  The funding will support children’s continued learning while their schools are closed, including by scaling up distance education.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees airlifted emergency relief items to Chad on 19 March, responding to the humanitarian needs of some 10,000 Sudanese refugees.  Clashes in Sudan’s West Darfur region since late 2019 have forced more than 16,000 people, mostly women and children, to cross the border into Chad.

Ronaldo Costa Filho, the new Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.

At least 810 people died in 2019 while crossing deserts, river and remote terrain on different migration routes across the Americas, making the year one of the deadliest on record, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported today.

Today, the United Nations Development Programme released its 2019 Human Development Report on Inequality titled “Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today”, which identifies a new generation of inequalities that are driving the global protests sweeping the world, including the gap in basic living standards.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported today that an estimated 761,000 children were internally displaced by storms in the Caribbean between 2014 and 2018; that’s the hottest five-year period on record.  This is an increase of 600,000, compared to the 175,000 children displaced in the preceding five years.

In Geneva, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is having its annual conference to strengthen global wildlife trade rules.  The Conference received 56 proposals to change the levels of protection for wildlife species.

The flooding caused by Tropical Cyclone Idai has caused at least 122 deaths and affected more than a million people in both Mozambique and Malawi, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).  Close to 83,000 people are displaced in Malawi and more than 17,000 in Mozambique, OCHA says.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:

The United Nations refugee agency said today that more than 2,000 Somalis have returned home from Yemen since 2017, as part of an assistance programme carried out jointly with the International Organization for Migration and authorities in Yemen and Somalia.  Yemen currently hosts more than 270,000 refugees, the vast majority of them Somalis.