Mali

The Emergency Relief Coordinator today released $30 million from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund to urgently scale up relief efforts in the Sahel, where an acute drought, combined with exceptionally high food prices and worsening insecurity, has escalated humanitarian needs.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visited the town of Bikoro in north-western Democratic Republic of the Congo today to assess the response to the current Ebola outbreak.  WHO is deploying experts and coordinating partners as well as providing supplies and equipment to the area.

At its 71^st Meeting, on 4 May 2018, the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, in connection with the examination of the second report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in Mali (document S/2018/136), covering the period from January 2014 to June 2017, agreed to convey the following messages through a public statement by the Chair of the Working Group:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced today that Chile had just acceded to the international conventions on statelessness.  The Office commended the country’s commitment to promote the fundamental right to nationality.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today condemned the killing of three Ecuadorian newspaper staff workers:  Javier Ortega, Paul Rivas and Efrain Segarra.  The three workers, employed by the newspaper El Comercio, were kidnapped on 26 March, near the border between Ecuador and Colombia.

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Gustavo Meza-Cuadra (Peru):

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

Despite an ever-precarious security situation that had claimed the lives of civilians and United Nations peacekeepers alike, the peace process in Mali was making headway along a timetable leading to elections later in 2018, the Secretary‑General’s Special Representative in that country told the Security Council today.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that, in the last 48 hours, the largest United Nations medical shipment to have entered Gaza since the beginning of 2018 has provided hospitals there with lifesaving drugs and other supplies to meet urgent medical needs.  It will help respond to the needs of 100,000 children and mothers.

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