The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) says it will deploy 34 electoral advisers in Bangui and 16 prefectures to help the country as it prepares for presidential and legislative elections late this year and early 2021.
In progress at UNHQ
Noon Briefings
The United Nations Development Programme will tomorrow launch “Mission 1.5”, a climate change engagement campaign that will connect global citizens with Governments and policymakers. Built around an online video game on climate policy, it provides a platform for voting on solutions they wish to see happen.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it’s seeking $107 million to support life-saving humanitarian operations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There are acute food, nutrition, health, water and sanitation needs, but funding for humanitarian operations there remain historically low.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will convene a global research and innovation forum in Geneva tomorrow to mobilize international action on coronavirus, the agency announced today. WHO has sent diagnostic kits to 14 countries and identified more than 160 laboratories with the technology to diagnose coronavirus.
The United Nations human rights office said today it is very concerned about repeated attacks against indigenous peoples in Nicaragua, non-protection of their rights and impunity for crimes committed against them. Some 40 indigenous people have been killed, 47 injured, 44 kidnapped and four disappeared since 2015.
World food prices rose for the fourth consecutive month in January, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Food Price Index, with vegetable oils, sugar and wheat among the chief drivers of the price increases. FAO also forecast a record 2.715 billion metric tons of cereal production for 2019.
The World Health Organization today launched a strategic preparedness and response plan to help countries prevent, detect and diagnose transmission of the coronavirus. The agency is requesting $675 million to fund the plan for the next three months; most of money will support countries particularly at risk.
A medical air bridge operation in Yemen coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and local authorities began today, bringing several Yemeni patients of an initial group of 30 from Sana’a to Amman, with more flights to follow.
The United Nations is increasingly concerned about the desert locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa, the worst to hit Ethiopia and Somalia in 25 years and Kenya’s worst infestation in 70 years. The Secretary-General said in a tweet that the outbreak is making the dire food security situation in the region even worse.
Ghassan Salamé, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Libya, expressed deep concern to the Security Council today that the truce agreed earlier this month holds only in name. Fighting and military reinforcements on both sides raise the spectre of a full conflict engulfing the wider region.