Syria

With today marking one year since the start of the military campaign to retake Mosul from Da’esh, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq said that of the 1 million people who fled the city, some 673,000 are still displaced.  She noted that the number of people who fled exceeded the worst-case projections of aid workers.

Marking World Day against the Death Penalty, the Secretary-General said that the barbaric practice had no place in the twenty-first century and called on countries who continued to use it to stop executions.  He also praised progress made, noting some 170 countries had either abolished or stopped using the death penalty.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) today echoed the concern of the Secretary-General about the violence in south-west and north-west Cameroon.  OHCHR calls on the Government of Cameroon to establish prompt, effective, impartial and independent investigations to ensure accountability.

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.

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.

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.

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.