India

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:

The United Nations team in Indonesia is supporting efforts to vaccinate 80 per cent of the population, over 216 million people, against COVID-19.  Work has begun to bring the country into the COVAX facility, and the World Health Organization helped finalize a vaccine introduction road map and guidelines.

The following statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres was issued today:

From Madagascar, the United Nations is issuing a flash appeal for $76 million to support more than 1 million people in the south who face a potentially life-threatening lack of food, nutrition, water and sanitation, and health assistance due to the region’s worst drought in 10 years coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, T. S. Tirumurti, paid a courtesy call on UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.

Experts at the Pacific Disaster Centre estimate that 70,000 people in Nicaragua and over 483,000 people in Honduras are vulnerable to the impact of Hurricane Eta, which is poised to make landfall as United Nations teams, national authorities and regional partners prepare response plans.

Mayerlín Vergara Pérez from Colombia is the 2020 laureate of the Nansen Refugee Award, the UN refugee agency announced today.  The Caribbean Regional Coordinator for the Renacer Foundation has spent more than two decades helping the non-profit pursue eradication of sexual exploitation and abuse of children and adolescents.

The United Nations and humanitarian partners today released a tri-national action plan seeking $10.4 million to support Government responses over the next year to urgent needs in the border area between Colombia, Peru and Brazil, which currently has the world’s highest COVID-19 mortality rates per 100,000 people.