Colombia

The new Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations, Mauricio Gaona, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is deeply concerned by news of a boat carrying migrants adrift off the Canary Islands for almost a month before it was found. Spanish authorities recovered 44 survivors. More than 80 people are believed to have died or gone missing. Monitoring and rescue capacity along the West Africa Atlantic route remain limited.

In Nepal and China, the UN and humanitarian partners are supporting relief efforts following severe flooding that has killed people, left others missing and caused widespread destruction. Teams are deploying medical supplies, food, shelter and personnel and using satellite imagery to assess the disaster’s scale.

The risk of the Ebola outbreak spreading to the Central African Republic has increased following the confirmation of cases in provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo bordering the country. The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator has allocated $3 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help the Central African Republic with prevention efforts.

In Colombia, the UN and its partners have provided assistance to 3,000 people across the departments of Chocó, Valle del Cauca and Risaralda, complementing the Government-led response following the earthquake that struck the country just over a week ago, impacting over 186,000 people and leading to 300 deaths.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher has allocated $5 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund to support the humanitarian response in Colombia following the devastating earthquake there. The UN is also deploying teams to assess needs in most impacted areas, in coordination with local authorities.

Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan has systematically dismantled the rights of women — half its population — making it a global outlier with no parallel in the modern world, UN-Women reports. Half of Afghan women interviewed leave home only once or twice a month due to severe restrictions.

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

The West Bank is at the breaking point with Israeli settler violence reaching unprecedented levels, Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov warned today. So far this year, the UN has documented over 1,430 incidents, many of them deadly, impacting about 260 Palestinian communities.

Yemen faces a greater risk of renewed large-scale conflict than at any point since the UN-brokered truce of April 2022, Hans Grundberg, the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Yemen, warns. Mr. Grundberg is engaging intensively with the Yemeni parties, regional actors and global partners on options for de-escalation.