Noon Briefings

An upsurge of violence in the Central African Republic has caused a 50 per cent increase in the number of internally displaced people this year to a total of nearly 600,000. Fighting has engulfed territories that had been relatively stable, including Basse-Kotto, Mbomou and Haut-Mbomou, with almost 70 per cent of the country now in the hands of armed groups.

An estimated 370,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since 25 August.  A flight chartered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees carrying emergency aid has landed in that country.  A second flight, donated by the United Arab Emirates, was carrying 2,000 tents.  The supplies will help 25,000 refugees.

The number of migrant deaths and disappearances over the past three years is likely to be much higher than the 23,000 that the International Organization for Migration has reported globally since 2014, since many deaths are not recorded, according to a report released by the agency today.

Mark Lowcock, the new head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), will travel to Niger and Nigeria from 9 to 12 September to raise the profile of the Lake Chad Basin crisis impacting some 17 million people.  He will seek additional humanitarian support to avert the risk of famine.

Irina Bokova, Director-General of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), condemned the killing of Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh, shot outside her home on Tuesday.  Ms. Lankesh, editor and publisher of a Kannada-language weekly, was an outspoken critic of right-wing extremism.

OCHA says a cholera outbreak has been reported in Borno State, north-eastern Nigeria, the first case of which was recorded on 16 August.  More than 530 suspected cases had been registered as of yesterday, including 23 deaths, mainly in Muna Garage, a camp hosting about 20,000 internally displaced persons on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the state capital.

The United Nations Human Rights Office confirmed that 33 civilians in Yemen were killed and 25 injured in the 23 August air strike by coalition forces that hit a hotel in Sana’a Governorate, one of several coalition air strikes that day, which resulted in deaths.  Witnesses said there had been no warnings of an attack.

The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees released a report today showing a decline in the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe, but warned that many migrants still risk death, serious abuses or both by continuing to resort to smugglers and trafficking networks.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is delivering emergency supplies to some 200,000 people in northwest Bangladesh after massive floods inundated more than half the country.  Many survivors have lost everything.  Nearly 7 million people have been affected by the floods; more than 580,000 hectares of crop land has been destroyed.

In Ethiopia, the fifth round of food distributions has reached 330,000 of the targeted 3.3 million people in the Somali region, where successive failed rains have exacerbated the food insecurity crisis.  The ongoing distributions are expected to be completed by mid-September.