A convoy of 109 trucks with food supplies for the World Food Programme and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, originally scheduled for 17 November, was instructed by the Israel Defense Forces to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route on 16 November from the Kerem Shalom crossing and was looted inside Gaza.
In progress at UNHQ
South Sudan
The Security Council today decided to extend the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) until 15 November 2025 to maintain the Force’s authorized troop and police ceilings and call for a strategic review of UNISFA’s effectiveness, strategic objectives and alignment with the evolving regional security situation.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that in Gaza City, along with UN partners, mental health and psychosocial support services are being provided to tens of thousands of people and solid waste that has piled up along Tareq bin Zeyad Street is being picked up.
The just released UN Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report says that nations must dramatically increase climate adaptation efforts and urgently close the $187-359 billion per year gap that exists between adaptation finance needs and current international public adaptation finance flows.
The recent and fourth extension of South Sudan’s transitional period must be the last, the UN’s top official in the world’s youngest nation told the Security Council today, as he conveyed the people’s “deep frustration and fatigue” with their leaders’ persistent delays in implementing the peace agreement and in realizing their long-held aspirations for peace and democracy.
In Lebanon, the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Public Health opened a new Trauma and Burn Management Unit at the Turkish Trauma and Emergency Hospital in Sidon and a humanitarian convoy successfully delivered one month of medical supplies, medicine and hygiene kits to the Primary Healthcare Centre in Labweh.
The war in Sudan and political uncertainty in South Sudan have stalled progress in political dialogue on the final status of Abyei and border issues, a senior UN official told the Security Council today, as Security Council members urged greater support to be lent to the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) in fulfilling its mandate, ahead of its expiration on 14 November.
The UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which brings together leaders of 15 UN humanitarian agencies and large international humanitarian non-governmental organizations, issued a joint statement describing the situation in North Gaza as apocalyptic, with reports of civilians being targeted while seeking safety.
Following Hurricane Oscar that hit Cuba, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has released $3.5 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund to address urgent needs for shelter, health, food and water and a $33 million Action Plan will launched tomorrow.
On 17 October 2024, members of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 2206 (2015) concerning South Sudan were briefed by the Coordinator of the Panel of Experts on South Sudan in connection with the Panel’s workplan for its mandate in pursuance of Security Council resolution 2731 (2024) of 30 May 2024.