The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are helping the Government of Cambodia with distance learning programmes for the more than 3 million students who are out of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In progress at UNHQ
Noon Briefings
A survey by the United Nations Children’s Fund found that 535,500 children in Burkina Faso under five years old are acutely malnourished, including 156,000 who suffer from severe acute malnutrition and are at imminent risk of death. Community health workers have been mobilized to screen and treat children in the most remote areas.
The United Nations and humanitarian partners today released a tri-national action plan seeking $10.4 million to support Government responses over the next year to urgent needs in the border area between Colombia, Peru and Brazil, which currently has the world’s highest COVID-19 mortality rates per 100,000 people.
In Yemen, the United Nations and its aid partners report they have distributed emergency food, hygiene kits and other essential items to over 7,600 families impacted by deadly floods and torrential rains that destroyed homes, crops and livestock in July and August. An estimated 62,000 families have been affected.
The COVID-19 pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line by 2021, reversing decades of progress to eradicate extreme poverty, according to new data released today by the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
Africa Amnesty Month begins today. Linked to the Silencing the Guns in Africa by 2020 initiative, the disarmament effort is designed to reduce the flows of illicit small arms and light weapons, allowing anyone to hand in illegal weapons throughout the month of September.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed deep concern over death threats against Congolese rights defender and Nobel Prize Laureate Denis Mukwege, calling for a swift investigation and action to bring the perpetrators to justice. The threats followed his condemnation of the killing of civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has put two reports online, one detailing violations in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, and the other warning that accountability for violations committed in the context of demonstrations remains elusive, despite promising steps by the Government of Iraq.
Millions of refugees across Eastern Africa who rely on the World Food Programme (WFP) to survive will face serious hunger and malnutrition, the agency warned today, citing reduced donor funding due to the socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. WFP needs $323 million to assist refugees over the next six months.
Fighting in Afghanistan’s Kunduz Province has displaced 52,000 people since 16 August following attacks by a non-State armed group and responsive strikes by national security forces. A surge of United Nations staff is under way to boost humanitarian capacity in Kunduz and a joint assessment team was deployed.