Syria

United Nations agencies and their partners have dramatically scaled up the relief operation in Dominica as access improves across the island, OCHA reports.  And in Antigua and Barbuda, $2 million has been mobilized to help provide permanent roofing on Barbuda.

The World Food Programme (WFP) announced today that it would cut food rations by 30 per cent for the 420,000 refugees living in Dadaab and Kakuma camps in northern Kenya due to insufficient funding.  WFP urgently needs $28.5 million to adequately cover the food assistance needs for the refugees over the next six months.

About the response to the cholera outbreak in Yemen, medicines procured by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for the treatment of 30,000 patients have been airlifted to Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, for transfer across the Red Sea to the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

While there had been some progress, the situation in Syria remained fragile and highly susceptible to backsliding, the United Nations Special Envoy for the country warned today, urging both sides to assess the situation realistically and responsibly and return to Geneva talks, which he said he intended to reconvene in October.

As of 25 September, two days ago, there were nearly 740,000 suspected cholera cases in Yemen and more than 2,100 associated deaths recorded, with children accounting for more than half, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  Aid workers have set up 250 diarrhoea treatment centres.

The number of Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar and arrived in Bangladesh in the past month has reached 436,000.  Aid agencies have reached more than 80 per cent of these people with food aid and are scaling up their support.

The Secretary-General spoke at a high-level meeting on reform of the United Nations.  He stressed that the true test will be measured through tangible results in the lives of the people the Organization serves — and the trust of those who support its work through their hard-earned resources.

The United Nations Environment Programme is launching a campaign to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Montreal Protocol and its success in protecting Earth against ozone depletion.  The “Ozone Heroes” campaign seeks to raise awareness of collective efforts to tackle climate change and the depletion of the ozone layer.

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.

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.