The fragmentation of Yemen is becoming a stronger and more pressing threat, the Security Council heard today, as the top United Nations official in the country cautioned that recent clashes risk further deepening the world’s leading humanitarian crisis and spreading violence to other southern governorates.
The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:
The World Food Programme (WFP) today welcomed what it called important and positive steps by authorities in Yemen to ensure food aid reaches the most vulnerable in Government-controlled areas. WFP will resume food distributions after the Eid Al-Adha festival for 850,000 people in Sana’a City.
United Nations humanitarian officials in the Philippines report that the Government declared a national dengue epidemic yesterday. There have now been more than 146,000 reported cases of dengue fever and 622 confirmed fatalities since the beginning of 2019, mostly affecting children between 5 and 9 years old.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) launched a new website to identify laws and policies related to response efforts, featuring an interactive map with data from 140 nations and covering such areas as a country’s ability to diagnose HIV among babies and whether people are prosecuted for carrying condoms.
The United Nations Children’s Fund announced a partnership to build a first-of-its-kind factory to convert plastic waste in Côte d’Ivoire into modular plastic bricks, which will be used to build classrooms. Côte d’Ivoire needs 15,000 classrooms; 500 will be constructed through the partnership in the next two years.
While a ceasefire in the key Yemeni port city of Hodeidah is holding, faster progress is needed to fully implement the 2018 Stockholm Agreement between the Government and the Houthi militia, the Security Council heard today, as briefers warned of the risks of the country being dragged into a regional conflict and a deterioration of a humanitarian crisis that is already the worst in the world.
Some 450 non-State combatants have been disarmed and demobilized in western Central African Republic since the signing of the peace agreement in February, according to the United Nations mission in that country, including elements of the Front Démocratique du Peuple Centraficain and the Union des Forces Républicaines.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) warns today that the pace of progress to reduce new HIV infections, increase access to treatment and end AIDS-related deaths is slowing down. In 2018, for the first time, the global resources available for the AIDS response fell significantly by nearly $1 billion.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Director General announced today he will reconvene the Emergency Committee on Ebola to assess the threat after yesterday’s confirmation of the first case in Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. He also raised concerns about targeted attacks against the Ebola health response.
