Syria

More than 47,000 Ethiopians have arrived in Sudan seeking safety, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today.  A small number of Eritrean refugees also arrived from Tigray.  UNHCR and Sudanese authorities have now moved more than 11,000 refugees 70 kilometres from the Ethiopian border.

Despite slow progress in peace talks and a worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the commitment by the Government and opposition to two upcoming meetings of the Constitutional Committee presents a real opportunity for the warring sides to advance the political process, the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Envoy for Syria told the Security Council during a video conference meeting today.

A new United Nations Children’s Fund report shows that 320,000 children and young people under the age of 20 were infected with HIV in 2019 – about one every 100 seconds, bringing the total number of children living with HIV to 2.8 million.  About half of children worldwide had access to life-saving treatment; nearly 100,000 children died of AIDS.

The World Health Organization (WHO) today reported that the eleventh Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has ended.  WHO thanked partners for their support and congratulated responders and all those who tirelessly tracked cases, provided treatment, engaged communities and vaccinated more than 40,000 people at risk.

In Somalia, flash floods have affected nearly 73,000 people, displacing more than 13,000 and causing four deaths, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports.  The United Nations and partners have mobilized pre-positioned supplies to help those affected and provided shelter to at least 6,000 people.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched the Food Coalition, a multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral alliance that aims to ensure global food access and increase the resilience of agri-food systems.  The pandemic could add 132 million more people to the world's undernourished in 2020, FAO says, on top of the 690 million hungry people in 2019.

Reporting that Syria missed an October deadline to respond to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the country’s reported use and stockpiling of such weapons, the senior United Nations disarmament official urged today that the Security Council end its divisions on the critical matter and act to resolve it.

A new Food and Agricultural Organization report warns that the Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved by 2030 unless the world’s forests are restored.  Regional responses are making significant advances and 63 countries and other entities have committed to restoring 173 million hectares, but more needs to be done.

The parties to the Syrian conflict could reconvene the Constitutional Committee in November, a senior United Nations mediator said during a 27 October Security Council videoconference meeting, emphasizing that such progress could be “a door opener” to a deeper and wider peace process.

Some parts of Yemen are showing the highest rates of acute malnutrition among children under 5 ever recorded there, with more than half a million cases in southern districts, according to a food analysis released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Food Programme and partners.