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.
Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks at the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, in New York today:
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.
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.
The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:
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.
Urging a return to nuclear diplomacy, senior UN and Government officials briefing the Security Council today called on the United States and Iran to reanimate dialogue towards reimplementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear programme — while the Plan’s erstwhile participants traded charges and sparred over the parameters of any such return to engagement.
Results from the Global We the Women survey, produced by the UN Office for Partnerships and the polling company John Zogby Strategies, show that 86 per cent of women from 185 countries cite climate change and more than 50 per cent identify conflict as primary concerns for the next decade.
