Libya

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has launched an $186 million appeal to provide lifesaving protection and assistance to refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees and host communities in the Central Sahel, The number of displaced in Burkina Faso has more than quadrupled in the past year.

The United Nations is scaling up life-saving aid for north-west Syria, including health items to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic.  In May alone, it sent 1,781 trucks from Turkey, the highest number since cross-border operations began in 2014, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports.

For the first time since 2018, the World Food Programme has been able to send a humanitarian convoy from Kenya directly into South Sudan through the Nadapal Border crossing.  The nine-truck convoy carried 280 metric tons of food, enough to feed 20,000 people for a month.  The route’s reopening cuts travel times in half.

The United Nations humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, has released $40 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to address health emergencies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including a new Ebola outbreak in the city of Mbandaka, in north-western Équateur province.

The Security Council, acting unanimously in a 5 June videoconference meeting, decided to extend for one year a series of authorizations for Member States to inspect vessels on the high seas off the coast of Libya suspected of violating that country’s arms embargo.

In Bangladesh, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirmed today that a 71-year-old Rohingya man is the first refugee in the Cox’s Bazar camp to die from COVID-19 and some 30 other people have tested positive so far, yet the numbers are likely higher as testing is ramping up.

The Secretary-General welcomed the agreement between representatives of the Government of Venezuela and the Advisory Team of the National Assembly on responding to COVID-19.  He encouraged parties to respect humanitarian principles in implementing the accord and to continue seeking common ground to overcome the protracted crisis.

Some 50 people died in three attacks in Burkina Faso’s northern regions — the Sahel, North, Centre-North and East — marking the deadliest violence since March, when 43 civilians were killed during two attacks on northern villages.  Rising insecurity is making it difficult to reach the 2.2 million people in need of aid throughout the country.

An Ebola outbreak has been identified in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s western Equateur province.  The health ministry has identified six cases, including four people who have died.  The World Health Organization has staff in Mbandaka, the main city impacted by the outbreak, to support the response.

The twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will now take place from 1-12 November 2021, in Glasgow.  United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa said that if done right, recovery from the COVID-19 crisis can foster a more inclusive climate path.