Meeting in the hours following Israel’s air strikes against targets in Iran, the Security Council today heard — and its members largely agreed — that de-escalation and diplomacy are imperative to avoid further strain in a region already groaning under the weight of compounding conflict.
The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Chad, François Batalingaya, said today the country is in crisis with the east reaching a breaking point. Floods impacted nearly 2 million people last year; 3 million people are struggling to feed themselves. The $1.4 billion Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan is only 9 per cent funded.
The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:
With the clock ticking down towards the expiration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as conflicts proliferate in the Middle East, nuclear diplomacy is needed now, the Security Council heard today, even as its members disagreed on both how the Plan veered off-course and how to get it back on track.
The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Pascale Christine Baeriswyl (Switzerland):
Peacekeepers, supporting flood response, have airlifted medical supplies from Agok airstrip in the southern part of Abyei to other parts of the region, to ensure medical stocks, and the Mission is doing weekly flights to multiple areas in Abyei helping to provide humanitarian assistance to communities that are cut off because of flooding.
New estimates indicate that nearly 67 million people in Eastern Africa are now in need of humanitarian assistance, accounting for more than 20 per cent of the total number of people in need globally. Humanitarians continue to provide assistance to millions of people.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, in New York today:
Zamzam camp in North Darfur — which shelters over 220,000 displaced people — has now crossed the famine threshold, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, report on food security in Sudan. More than half the country’s population — 26 million people — now face acute hunger.
At least 53 Palestinian detainees are known to have died in Israeli military facilities and prisons since last October, according to a UN human rights office report published today on arbitrary, prolonged and incommunicado detentions, impacting thousands of Palestinians, including UN staff.
