Yemen

The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Dang Dinh Quy (Viet Nam):

At least 810 people died in 2019 while crossing deserts, river and remote terrain on different migration routes across the Americas, making the year one of the deadliest on record, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported today.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) is not declaring the novel coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern at this time, the outbreak is a very high risk in China, as well as regionally and globally, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has announced.

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, has released $10 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to help bolster the response to East Africa’s worst desert locust outbreak in decades, which is destroying crops in communities already facing food shortages.

While the number of journalists killed worldwide dropped by nearly half in 2019 to the lowest annual toll in more than a decade, they continue to face risks and perpetrators enjoy almost total impunity for these crimes, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization reported today.

The Humanitarian Coordinator for the United Nations in Iraq expressed her strong concern today over the suspension in granting access letters to humanitarian actors carrying out critical missions in support of the country’s vulnerable people.

While Yemen is experiencing the “quietest” week in its five-year-long war that triggered the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, concerns persist about safe access to reach millions of people requiring urgent assistance, high-level United Nations officials told the Security Council today.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees launched a Refugee Response Plan for Sudan today in Khartoum, calling for $477 million to help more than 900,000 refugees and nearly a quarter million of their Sudanese hosts. 

The United Nations is in touch with the Government of the Philippines, which is leading the response to the Taal volcano eruption in the Calabarzon region, some 70 kilometres south of Manila.  The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that 18,000 people have taken shelter in evacuation centres.

The Security Council today decided to extend for six months a United Nations political mission overseeing a peace agreement between the Government of Yemen and the Houthi militia in the port city of Hudaydah.