World leaders in the General Assembly today committed to “urgent and transformative action” to end the gender inequalities, restrictive laws and multiple forms of discrimination that perpetuate the global AIDS epidemic, adopting a lengthy Political Declaration that spells out measures to stop the disease in its tracks by 2030.
Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the Global Fund’s twentieth anniversary today:
Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks at the opening of the high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS today:
More than 271,000 people have been impacted and over 26,000 displaced by monsoon-related flash floods and landslides in south-western Sri Lanka, humanitarian affairs officials say. The impacts of the south-west monsoon come as Sri Lanka works to mitigate the environmental impact of a sinking cargo ship near Colombo.
Humanitarian workers in Sudan report that the security situation in the town of Ag Geneina in western Darfur is stable but remains tense and unpredictable. More than 230,000 people were displaced by the conflict in Darfur since the beginning of 2021, more than four times the 53,000 displaced in all of 2020.
The General Assembly decided today to convene a high-level meeting from 8 to 10 June to take stock of global efforts to end the HIV/AIDS crisis by 2030, adopting a draft resolution to that effect after a lengthy debate on the situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
The Mission in South Sudan deployed a Nepalese Quick Reaction Force Team to Cueibet to support local police protecting civilians from a potential conflict between armed groups, following the killing of a young man. The peacekeepers intercepted the groups and remained in the area until the situation was stable.
Following is UN Secretary‑General António Guterres’ message for World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December:
A new United Nations Children’s Fund report shows that 320,000 children and young people under the age of 20 were infected with HIV in 2019 – about one every 100 seconds, bringing the total number of children living with HIV to 2.8 million. About half of children worldwide had access to life-saving treatment; nearly 100,000 children died of AIDS.
Without mitigation efforts, COVID-19-related service disruptions could result in more than 500,000 extra deaths from tuberculosis, HIV and other AIDS-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa from 2020 to 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme against HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said today.
