Noon Briefings

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.

In Afghanistan, the United Nations Mission there has verified allegations that Taliban and local self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Daesh fighters killed at least 36 people, including civilians, during an attack on 5 August in the Mirza Olang village of Sari Pul province.  The Mission’s findings were released as part of its human rights report.

Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council he was aggrieved that despite his team’s best efforts over two years, the deplorable and avoidable man-made catastrophe ravaging Yemen has seen no significant improvement.  On the contrary, the suffering has intensified relentlessly.

Filippo Grandi paid his first official visit to Sudan as High Commissioner this week, with refugees continuing to flee the brutal conflict in South Sudan.  Sudan has hosted more than 416,000 South Sudanese since 2013, including some 170,000 new arrivals in 2017, as well as refugees from Eritrea, Syria, Yemen and Chad.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and its partners have begun relocating more than 33,000 Congolese refugees from over-crowded reception centres in northern Angola to a newly established settlement in Lóvua, some 100 kilometres further inland, where they will all receive a plot of land on which to build shelters and grow food.

The Government and the United Nations held an event in Mogadishu to celebrate Somalia’s polio-free status of the last three years.  The World Health Organization applauded Somalia’s efforts to ward off the highly infectious virus while urging continued caution and vigilance.

The International Organization for Migration has released a report profiling migrants passing through its West Africa transit centres.  It reveals wide-spread misinformation about what awaits migrants on their journeys and in countries of temporary residence, particularly Algeria and Libya, where migrants reported abusive treatment, physical violence, and/or threats.

The cholera outbreak in Yemen has spread to all but 1 of its 22 governorates, with more than 480,000 suspected cases and nearly 2,000 associated deaths from diarrhoea-related diseases, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports.  There are concerns the numbers could rise as Yemen heads into its rainy season.