Middle East

The UN refugee agency today drew attention to a collapsing health situation among refugees and asylum-seekers at off-shore facilities in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, calling on the Government of Australia to urgently act to prevent a further tragedy to people forcibly transferred under its off-shore processing policy.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reports that it has managed, for the first time since civil war broke out in South Sudan almost five years ago, to send a food-assistance boat convoy up the Sobat River, a tributary of the White Nile in the Upper Nile region, with enough food to sustain 40,000 people for one month.

The World Health Organization today launched its first global guidelines on sanitation and health, warning that the world will not achieve universal sanitation coverage by 2030 without comprehensive policy shifts and more investment.

Warning that current trends are jeopardizing the possibility of a two-State solution for Israelis and Palestinians, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the Security Council today that the international community must step in to change this grave trajectory.

A new report released today says that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) mobilized $25 million to increase resilience and restore more than 800 buildings for the most vulnerable people in Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, which were hit by two powerful back-to-back hurricanes a year ago.

The 2018 International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East concluded today with two panel discussions, one exploring media coverage of the Palestinian refugee story 70 years after the Nakba, and the other focused on the protection of journalists covering the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict.

MOSCOW, 5 September — The 2018 International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East opened here today, with journalists, policymakers and other experts examining progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost 25 years after the signing of the first Oslo Accord, as well as issues related to media coverage of the conflict, Palestine refugee narratives and the protection of journalists.

Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, called today for urgent funding to restore depleted supplies of emergency fuel for essential services in the Gaza Strip.  Within a week, Al Aqsa Hospital in the Middle Area of the Gaza Strip may have to shut down, and, without fuel, some 300,000 people will potentially be affected by serious public health concerns.

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message, delivered by Alison Smale, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, to the 2018 United Nations International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East, in Moscow today:

Despite emergency support from dozens of partners, the United Nations agency charged with providing health care, education and other basic services to some 5 million Palestine refugees will soon lose its ability to carry out much of its critical work, the director of the agency’s New York office told the Palestinian Rights Committee today.