At the opening of a two-day High-Level Meeting on Youth today, the Secretary-General urged the international community to expand opportunities for young men and women and to support them as agents of change.
In progress at UNHQ
Noon Briefings
An international meeting organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization, involving Member States and the United Nations, will be held on Monday in Rome to look at the response to the crisis in the Horn of Africa. The World Food Programme now has a revised appeal for $340 million for its response to this drought.
The World Food Programme’s Chief, Josette Sheeran, in Somalia today said the situation was a life and death one. The Programme is preparing to open up several new routes — by land and air — into the core of the famine zone. It would start airlifts into Mogadishu within days to bring vital foods to malnourished children.
The United Nations has declared a state of famine in two regions of southern Somalia. Across the country, nearly half the population is now in crisis. Some 2.8 million are in the south. The Secretary-General said if funding is not made available for humanitarian interventions now, the famine will likely spread.
The Secretary-General, addressing the third Global Review of Aid for Trade at the World Trade Organization in Geneva today, said that, at a time of tight budgets, the annual rate of increase for Aid for Trade has slowed sharply. He urged the donor community not to fall short of the present level of Aid for Trade.
Briefing the Security Council today, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Côte d’Ivoire, Choi Young-jin, said a new chapter had opened in the country with four major tasks to address: restoration of law and order; national reconciliation; legislative elections; and economic recovery.
In a message to the meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya, the Secretary-General appealed to the international community to support the efforts of the Special Envoy and send a unified message urging the parties to engage in direct talks through the Secretary-General’s good offices to break the impasse.
The Security Council adopted resolution 1999 (2011) today, on the admission of the Republic of South Sudan to the United Nations, without a vote, transferring its request to the General Assembly. The Secretary-General congratulated the Council, reiterating that a viable South will need a viable North, and vice versa.
The Secretary-General says he is extremely worried by the situation in the Horn of Africa, where more than 11 million people need urgent assistance amid their worst drought in decades. He called an emergency meeting with UN agency heads today at which they agreed to do all they can to prevent a deepening crisis.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared Somalia, which is facing the worst drought in six decades, as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. António Guterres saw the desperate situation of Somali refugees first-hand at the Dadaab camp, which is the world’s largest, in Kenya yesterday.