The United Nations and humanitarian partners today appealed for $4.2 billion to help up to 19 million people in need in Yemen, including 10 million on the brink of famine. Mark Lowcock, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, said he expects current aid funding to run out by the end of March.
In progress at UNHQ
Noon Briefings
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that heavy rains and cyclones have caused an outbreak of desert locusts in Sudan and Eritrea that is rapidly spreading to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, potentially causing a major threat to agricultural production and food security.
The United Nations refugee agency, International Migration Agency (IOM) and their partners today launched the 2019 response plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis. It seeks to raise $920 million to meet the needs of over 900,000 refugees from Myanmar and over 330,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in host communities.
The United Nations refugee agency and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called upon European countries and regional organizations today to take urgent action to ensure no child is born, or remains, stateless in Europe. In 2017, some 2,100 children were registered as “stateless”, a four-fold increase over 2010.
Some 3.3 billion people employed globally in 2018 had inadequate working conditions, the International Labour Organization’s report “World Employment and Social Outlook” states. Released today, it found that despite progress in reducing unemployment, work quality is not improving in many parts of the world.
The United Nations refugee agency says it is seeing a surge in refugee arrivals from South Sudan into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the past few days, an estimated 5,000 refugees have arrived in several border villages near the town of Ingbokolo in north-eastern Ituri Province, according to local village chiefs.
The Government of the Philippines declared a major outbreak of measles last week in Metro Manila and Central Luzon, which has now expanded to other areas, according to humanitarian affairs officials. More than 4,300 suspected cases of measles have been reported since January, with at least 70 deaths.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has scaled up efforts to support five western African countries as they respond to outbreaks of Lassa fever. The largest outbreak thus far has affected 16 states in Nigeria, with 213 confirmed cases to date.
Efforts to find and treat an additional 1.5 million undiagnosed, unreported and untreated tuberculosis patients by the end of 2019 have been showing signs of success, according to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, driven by six Asian countries bearing the world’s highest TB burdens.
The United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are carrying out their largest-ever convoy today, with the aim of providing humanitarian assistance to more than 40,000 displaced people in Syria’s remote Rukban makeshift settlement. The operation is expected to last about one week.