Immediate employment for the Haitian population was a crucial part of the response to the earthquake, Rebeca Grynspan, the new Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said this afternoon, as she announced a dramatic ramping up of the agency’s Cash-for-Work in the devastated nation.
In progress at UNHQ
Press Conference
The absolute number of deaths during wartime ‑‑ people killed by violent means as well as deaths from disease or other non-violent causes that would not have occurred had there been no war ‑‑ always went down rather than up, suggesting a decline in the human cost of wars, no matter where in the world they were fought, according to a new study on war deaths up to 2007.
There was no clear picture yet as to what extra damage this morning’s aftershock had caused in Haiti, John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, said at Headquarters today.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today launched an independent report that calls for a new global financing initiative that could help fill an annual $16 billion funding gap in education, amid evidence that many countries were not on track to meet the pledges made at the 2000 World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, 10 years ago.
The only effective way to stave off the life-threatening effects of climate change was to build a true consensus in favour of structural change in global consumption patterns with the participation of all the world’s peoples, Pablo Solón-Romero, Deputy Permanent Representative of Bolivia, said at Headquarters today.
The United Nations today launched its first report on the state of the world’s indigenous people, with the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, saying it offered a “daring and bold” description of the situation of indigenous persons in health, poverty, education and human rights, and should be fed into the upcoming review of the Millennium Development Goals.
Investors were eager to invest in clean energy but needed public policies that would provide market certainty and minimize risks, participants in today’s Investor Summit on Climate Risk said at a Headquarters press conference.
Getting urgently needed search and rescue teams, medical aid and basic sustenance to areas of Haiti devastated by Tuesday’s earthquake was a huge task, but the response of the United Nations and the international community had been focused and swift, John Holmes, Emergency Relief Coordinator, said this afternoon.
The earthquake in Haiti had so far resulted in 14 fatalities among United Nations personnel and 56 staff members injured, but reports that the Secretary-General’s Special Representative was among the casualties could not be confirmed, the Organization’s peacekeeping chief said at a Headquarters press conference today.
A United Nations human rights expert, at a Headquarters press conference this morning, called for an independent investigation into war crimes and other grave violations of human rights law in Sri Lanka, based on an examination he commissioned to determine the authenticity of a video that apparently depicts the shooting of naked, bound prisoners on the island.