Myanmar

Humanitarian operations in Iraq are contracting in 2018 versus last year, when 6.2 million people were targeted with assistance.  The 2018 humanitarian response plan, launched on 6 March, seeks $569 million to assist 3.4 million highly vulnerable people struggling in the aftermath of the conflict with Da’esh.

The Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index for February found that rising world prices for staple grains and dairy products more than offset lower prices for vegetable oils, leading global food commodity prices up 1.1 per cent.  FAO also lowered projections for global wheat harvests this year.

The United Nations takes note of the recent decision by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Desalegn, to resign, to “allow further political reforms to take place in the country aimed at widening democratic space”.

More than five months since the start of the violence that forced 688,000 Rohingya to flee Myanmar into Bangladesh, a dangerous new crisis loomed, while restrictions on humanitarian access to the conflict areas posed a serious concern, the Security Council heard today, as it was briefed on the most recent developments in the region.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have agreed with the United Nations on the modalities to transfer, by the end of March, $930 million in support of the 2018 Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan, according to Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today that ongoing violence in the Central African Republic has pushed forced displacement to the highest levels since the start of the crisis in 2013.  Data as of the end of December show that 688,700 people were displaced internally.

The United Nations in Myanmar is following with concern the reports of violent clashes between the police and protesters in Rakhine State.  The United Nations Office urges respect for the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, and calls for the security forces and demonstrators to act with restraint.

The United Nations refugee agency evacuated 74 refugees, mostly children and women, from Libya to Niger.  In the Central African Republic, voluntary repatriation of Sudanese refugees has begun; since Tuesday, 230 refugees have arrived in Sudan.  Agency-chartered flights will bring some 1,500 refugees home by the end of 2017.

Some 350,000 children remain in need of support across the Caribbean three months after hurricanes Irma and Maria barrelled through the region, UNICEF reported today.  More than 35 per cent of children in Dominica - particularly those in shelters - are yet to be enrolled in education activities, and many children and families in Antigua and Barbuda remain unable to return home.

Describing “the most heartbreaking and horrific” accounts of sexual atrocities against girls and women in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the Special Representative of the Secretary‑General for Sexual Violence in Conflict told the Security Council today that every woman or girl she had spoken with had either endured brutal assault or had witnessed sexual violence, including seeing women literally being raped to death.