Humanitarian issues

The United Nations Children’s Fund is providing emergency relief in Bangladesh to people stranded by recent floods — including 1.6 million children — and is dispatching, among other things, 400,000 water purification tablets for 80,000 households and emergency medical supplies for district health facilities.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message at the opening of the Economic and Social Council Humanitarian Affairs Segment, in New York today:

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria, in New York today:

In Ukraine, United Nations humanitarian partners said that intense hostilities were reported over the weekend, across Government and non-Government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.

A newly released World Health Organization report finds that nearly a billion people worldwide live with a mental disorder.  It identifies public health crises, inequality, war and climate change as major health threats, and shows that depression and anxiety spiked more than 25 per cent in 2020.

In Sri Lanka, the World Food Programme (WFP) is launching its emergency response in the country amid the escalating food crisis.  WFP is working to provide life-saving food, cash and voucher assistance to 3 million of the most vulnerable people who can no longer meet their food needs due to the economic crisis there.

Today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, and this year’s theme is “Combating Elder Abuse”.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every year, one in six people aged 60 and older experience some form of abuse.

Almost one third of the food insecure South Sudanese that the World Food Programme (WFP) planned to support in 2022 will be without humanitarian food assistance due to funding shortages.  WFP said that the suspension of aid comes as South Sudan faces a year of unprecedented hunger.

With the truce in Yemen extended for another two months — markedly improving the humanitarian situation and significantly reducing civilian casualties — efforts towards a lasting peace must be further consolidated, the Special Envoy for that country told the Security Council today, as members welcomed this positive development while also highlighting the ongoing challenges faced by the Yemeni people as a result of the seven-year-old conflict.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) today awarded the Population Award for an individual to its youngest‑ever recipient, Emma Theofelus, a 25-year-old Parliamentarian from Namibia for her work advocating for women’s empowerment and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.