South Sudan

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Major General Kefyalew Amde Tessema of Ethiopia as Force Commander for the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA).

For the first time since 2018, the World Food Programme has been able to send a humanitarian convoy from Kenya directly into South Sudan through the Nadapal Border crossing.  The nine-truck convoy carried 280 metric tons of food, enough to feed 20,000 people for a month.  The route’s reopening cuts travel times in half.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant impact on United Nations peacekeeping missions worldwide, but they are rising to the challenge in ways that align with their respective mandates and the unique situations that they each face on the ground, three Force Commanders said during a 4 June videoconference meeting of the Security Council.

The Security Council in a 29 May videoconference meeting decided unanimously to maintain current troop and police ceilings of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) until 3 June.

The Security Council renewed until 31 May 2021 the arms embargo and targeted sanctions imposed on South Sudan, in a videoconference meeting on 29 May, while extending the mandate of the Panel of Experts tasked with overseeing those measures until 1 July 2021.

More than one in six young people have stopped working since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said today.  The latest ILO analysis of coronavirus’s impact on the labour market notes that those youth who remain employed have seen their working hours cut by 23 per cent.

Global human development — which is the combined measure of the world’s education, health and living standards — is set to decline this year for the first time since 1990, when the concept was first developed, the United Nations Development Programme reported today, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a determining factor.

The Security Council in a 14 May videoconference meeting decided unanimously to extend the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) for an additional six months.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) warned today that devastating gaps in social protection coverage in developing countries could compromise COVID-19 recovery plans and expose millions to poverty, as 55 per cent of the world’s population is not covered by social insurance or assistance.

The 2020 World Health Statistics, published today by the World Health Organization (WHO), show that the COVID-19 pandemic is causing significant loss of life, disrupting livelihoods and threatening recent development gains, underlining the urgent need for all nations to invest in strong health systems.