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Virtual Briefing by Spokesperson for Secretary-General
In a statement issued last night, the Secretary-General reiterated his belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against COVID-19.
As part of the Secretary-General's regular briefings with groups of Member States, he has met with the Africa Group today, telling them that the current crisis over the pandemic has wide-ranging implications, and that the United Nations and African countries are working together across many challenges and concerns at this time.
Tomorrow, the Secretary-General will be launching a report on the impact of the pandemic on children.
In Libya, the United Nations Mission in the country (UNSMIL) is alarmed by the continuing escalation of violence in Libya, particularly by the intensification of fighting in the past few days, resulting in civilian casualties and risking new waves of displacement.
A number of UN agencies – including UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others – as well as partners today said that millions of children are at increased risk of harm as their lives move increasingly online during the lockdown during the pandemic.
Our colleagues at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) today cautioned in a new policy brief that many commodity-dependent economies in Africa and Latin America will likely face an economic crisis before they are directly hit by COVID-19, which will further limit their ability to handle a health crisis.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet today urged countries in Latin America, and elsewhere in the world, to open up their borders to their own nationals stranded abroad, many of them with little or no access to healthcare.
In India, the World Health Organization said it will work with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to leverage the strategies that helped the country win its war against polio into the response to COVID-19 outbreak.
Our humanitarian colleagues tell us that our UN staff in Myanmar, together with national and international partners, is supporting health authorities and scaling up efforts to prevent and control the outbreak of COVID-19 and improve access to health care in humanitarian settings.
Our peacekeepers in Lebanon provided medical and personal protective equipment to their host communities in south Lebanon in their collective efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 virus.
In Nigeria, our colleagues there tell us that a shipment of ventilators and other essential medical supplies procured by the UN in the country arrived yesterday.
In the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. up until Friday, the country had gone 54 days without a confirmed case.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, since the beginning of April, people in the province of Ituri have been the victims of a new spike in violence.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today welcomed the relocation of 12 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Greece to Luxembourg.
For further details please see SOURCE below.
Office of the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General
