The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund issued the first comprehensive global report on water, noting that one in four health facilities around the world lack basic water services. In the least developed countries, that number rises to 55 per cent of health facilities lacking services.
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Noon Briefings
A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme and the European Union, finds that 113 million people in 53 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2018, down slightly from 124 million in 2017. Nearly two thirds of those suffering are in just eight countries.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, urged today the Government of Brunei Darussalam to stop the entry into force of a new penal code which would enshrine in legislation cruel and inhuman punishments in breach of international human rights law, including death by stoning.
Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, calls upon all parties to avoid further deterioration of the situation in the Gaza Strip on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the “Great March of Return” demonstrations in the enclave.
In response to Cyclone Idai, the first of three planes carrying relief items from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) landed today in Mozambique; supplies are to be distributed to 30,000 people there and in Malawi and Zimbabwe.
The World Food Programme (WFP) says tens of thousands of South Sudanese children in 150 schools will benefit from a just-launched programme for education in emergencies. Funded by the European Union and jointly implemented by WFP and the United Nations Children’s Fund, it will provide hot meals daily to 75,000 children.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said today that it is concerned that, according to its preliminary findings, an airstrike by international forces against the Taliban carried out overnight between Friday and Saturday in Kunduz killed 13 civilians, 10 of whom were children.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says more measles cases continue to be recorded in the Philippines, with nearly 23,000 so far, including 333 deaths officially reported, a 385 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2018. More than half the cases involve children under the age of five.
The United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh) announced the completion of the first exhumation of a Yazidi mass grave in Iraq’s Sinjar region, in the village of Kojo.
Adama Dieng, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, acknowledged today’s final appeal judgment by the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, largely upholding the 2016 guilty verdict against Radovan Karadžic and increasing his sentence from 40 years to life imprisonment.