Haiti

Since 11 March, the United Nations estimates that more than 50,000 people have left eastern Ghouta, Syria.  Amid visits from United Nations teams in recent days, most of the existing shelters do not have the capacity or infrastructure to accommodate the large number of people arriving in rural areas near Damascus.

Ending a two-day mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock and Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag called on the international community to urgently tackle the crisis in the country, where over 13 million people need humanitarian aid.

The United Nations Children’s Fund expressed deep sadness over the killing of its colleague, along with five other education workers, on 25 February in the north-western region of the Central African Republic, near Markounda, a remote area close to the Chadian border.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched its revised Multi-Year Humanitarian Response Plan 2017-2018 for Haiti, requiring $252 million to provide assistance to 2.2 million of an estimated 2.8 million people in need. The launch coincides with the eighth anniversary of the 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

A joint study on food security released by the Government of South Sudan and humanitarian partners such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Food Programme, warns that the current harvest season will not end the hunger crisis in the country.

Some 4,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar and crossed the border into Bangladesh in the last 48 hours.  The newly arrived refugees say thousands more people are waiting on Myanmar’s coast to make the crossing.  United Nations agencies and their partners are providing food and other supplies.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomed Myanmar’s commitment to implement recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported slower rates of refugees entering Bangladesh.

United Nations Secretary‑General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Susan D. Page of the United States as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH).

The Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, welcomed the full return of the Gaza crossings to the control of the Palestinian Authority.  He said the return was a landmark development in the implementation of the intra-Palestinian agreement, signed in Cairo on 12 October.

Irina Bokova, Executive Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, condemned today the killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta yesterday.  She welcomed the Prime Minister’s pledge to ensure justice in the crime against the right of free expression.