Myanmar

The Secretary-General and top UN officials held a virtual briefing for Member States to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as his call for global ceasefires saw positive gains in Colombia, Syria and Yemen and UNICEF continued to procure and ship protective equipment and other vital supplies to affected countries.

United Nations agencies and their partners launched an appeal today for $877 million to help some 855,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who are in Bangladesh, as well as more than 444,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in communities generously hosting those refugees.  More than half will fund vital services.

The United Nations is alarmed by reports of an artillery shell explosion that injured up to 17 children at a school in Myanmar’s Rakhine State last Thursday.  The incident is part of an escalation of hostilities between the Arakan Army and the Myanmar military across much of Rakhine.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) is not declaring the novel coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern at this time, the outbreak is a very high risk in China, as well as regionally and globally, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has announced.

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, has released $10 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to help bolster the response to East Africa’s worst desert locust outbreak in decades, which is destroying crops in communities already facing food shortages.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres on the Order of the International Court of Justice on the Request for the indication of provisional measures in the case concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar):

During her 10-day visit to Myanmar, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy met with the Union Electoral Commission, representatives of the main political parties in Parliament and Rohingya and Rakhine political [parties] and activists, as well as local officials, community leaders and returnees in northern Rakhine State.

The United Nations Environment Programme and its partners released a report stating that countries plan to produce 120 per cent more fossil fuels by 2030 than can be burned under the 1.5°C warming limit, creating a “production gap” that makes climate goals more difficult to reach.  The report also details options for closing the gap.

The Government of Zambia, the United Nations and partners launched a response plan after the poorest rainfall in decades is expected to leave 2.4 million severely food insecure.  Meanwhile, humanitarian partners in Somalia and South Sudan are scaling up responses to severe seasonal flooding that affected 1 million.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and “Education Cannot Wait”, the first global, multilateral fund for education in emergencies started a strategic partnership to ensure children and youth in emergencies have access to education opportunities.