Haiti

Thousands of Rohingya people continue fleeing Myanmar’s Rakhine State and describe continued violence and human rights abuses, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, told the Human Rights Council yesterday, warning that the international community will not forget the outrages committed.

The Human Rights Office says it is deeply concerned at reports that the Palestinian Bedouin community of Khan al Ahmar-Abu al Helu is to be demolished by the Israeli authorities in the coming days.  The community is home to 181 people,  more than half of them children.

Today is the International Day of the Tropics.  As you know, the Tropics are the area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, and host approximately 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity and much of its language and cultural diversity.

The Security Council today decided to extend for one year the mandate of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), while also laying out a staggered decrease in its uniformed personnel and requesting periodic progress assessments on the Secretary-General’s proposed drawdown and exit strategy.

The temporary base in Tagbara, north-east of Bambari, of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic was attacked by anti-balaka fighters today.  One peacekeeper was killed and 11 others were injured after several hours of exchange of fire. The Mission condemned the attack and deployed reinforcements to Tagbara.

With the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) fully operational, preparations have already begun for that follow-up peacekeeping operation to make way for a new United Nations presence by the end of 2019 that would focus on the Caribbean nation’s long-term sustainable development, the Organization’s top peacekeeping official told the Security Council today.

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.