India

The Organization released today $65 million for the humanitarian response in Ethiopia, comprising $45 million from the United Nations-managed Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund and $20 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund, as the security situation in Tigray remains volatile.

An annual report released by the Global Network against Food Crises warns that the number of people facing acute food insecurity and needing urgent life- and livelihood-saving assistance hit a five-year high in 2020 in countries beset by food crises.

The United Nations country team in Myanmar calls for the immediate release of dozens of journalists who are detained more than three months after the military seized control of the Government.  To date, military authorities have revoked the operating licenses of six Myanmar media outlets; 82 journalists have been arrested, more than half of them are still detained.

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 Elsie Initiative, a United Nations Trust Fund that supports deployment of uniformed women to peace operations, announced this morning its first five recipients — Liberia, Mexico, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone — during a high-level virtual event.  The Fund also launched its second programming round.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, with support from the World Health Organization and other partners, has launched a yellow fever vaccination campaign targeting more than 16.3 million people in the country, the first such drive against the disease in Africa this year.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said today that, due to significant funding gaps, it is cutting food rations for refugees and internally displaced people in South Sudan.  The cuts will affect nearly 700,000 of them and they will now receive 50 per cent of a full ration, down from 70 per cent.

On International Women’s Day, peacekeeping colleagues report that Bangladesh, for the first time, is deploying four justice government-provided personnel, all women, to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), later this month.

The United Nations team, led by Resident Coordinator Stefan Priesner, is helping authorities in Malaysia launch a national COVID-19 vaccination programme.  More than 500,000 people have registered to receive the vaccine, which aims to reach 80 per cent of the population, 24 million people, by March 2022.

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s remarks to the inaugural session of the World Sustainable Development Summit 2021, held today: