#COVID-19

The Organization released today $65 million for the humanitarian response in Ethiopia, comprising $45 million from the United Nations-managed Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund and $20 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund, as the security situation in Tigray remains volatile.

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:

An annual report released by the Global Network against Food Crises warns that the number of people facing acute food insecurity and needing urgent life- and livelihood-saving assistance hit a five-year high in 2020 in countries beset by food crises.

The United Nations team in Madagascar is helping authorities to address record-high food insecurity and surging severe acute malnutrition caused by droughts, sandstorms and caterpillar plagues in the south of the island.  Authorities and the United Nations launched a flash appeal in January for nearly $76 million.

Humanitarian workers in Sudan report that the security situation in the town of Ag Geneina in western Darfur is stable but remains tense and unpredictable.  More than 230,000 people were displaced by the conflict in Darfur since the beginning of 2021, more than four times the 53,000 displaced in all of 2020.

Unrelenting drought in southern Madagascar is forcing hundreds of thousands of people to the brink of famine, the World Food Programme (WFP) reports.  At least 1.35 million people need emergency food and nutrition assistance.  Acute malnutrition in children under 5 has almost doubled over the last four months.

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message on “COVID-19 — How Do We Prevent the Pandemic from Becoming a Media Extinction Event?”, in New York today:

The Elsie Initiative, a United Nations Trust Fund that supports deployment of uniformed women to peace operations, announced this morning its first five recipients — Liberia, Mexico, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone — during a high-level virtual event.  The Fund also launched its second programming round.

Following is the text of UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s video message to the one-year commemoration of the United Nations Nigeria Severe Acute Respiratory Isolation (SARI) Centre, today:

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, with support from the World Health Organization and other partners, has launched a yellow fever vaccination campaign targeting more than 16.3 million people in the country, the first such drive against the disease in Africa this year.