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UN / UKRAINE GRIFFITHS
STORY: UN / UKRAINE GRIFFITHS
TRT: 03:18
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 25 FEBRUARY 2022, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Tilt up, exterior UN Headquarters
25 FEBRUARY 2022, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, press room dais
3. Wide shot, journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“Even before the recent events which have convulsed the world this week, there's been an eight-year-long conflict in eastern Ukraine and that meant nearly 3 million people in eastern Ukraine already needed humanitarian assistance before the recent days across both sides of the contact line and the UN, and our humanitarian partners, and the Red Cross movement, have been responding to that need these many years.”
5. Wide shot, dais
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“We have, not left, we are not leaving Ukraine. Obviously, people there bunkered down at the moment, but we're expanding our presence in Ukraine and scaling up efforts to help meet the needs of people affected across that country and we have been doing this for some weeks.”
7. Wide shot, dais
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“We, like you, are seeing reports of shelling on urban centres and other communities across Ukraine with unconfirmed reports, unconfirmed as yet reports, of civilian casualties and damage to residential infrastructure. We are concerned about reports of population movement as men, women and children are fleeing in search, safety and protection. I think it's fair to say that hundreds of thousands of people are on the move in Ukraine and out of Ukraine as we speak.”
9. Wide shot, dais
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“Yesterday, the Secretary General announced a $20 million allocation from the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund to scale up the immediate response. And we need this because we're now beginning to realize that the scale of need in these very, very extraordinary circumstances is going to be of the highest.”
11. Wide shot, dais
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“We need the safe, unimpeded access and protection of our humanitarian workers and the deliveries that they will be doing that they will be resuming as soon as the security allows it to all areas of Ukraine affected by conflict.”
13. Wide shot, dais
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“Displacement, of course is going to be a huge issue inside and outside the country. But we also anticipate interruptions of basic services, interruptions of pensions, you know, we have yet to see the consequences of where this particular operation is going.
15. Wide shot, dais
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations:
“I've been involved in contingency planning in Iraq, in Cambodia, in Yemen, in Syria, in many, many different parts of the world, in very big programs in Afghanistan. Contingency planning for what might or might not happen in Ukraine was of the highest degree of uncertainty.”
17. Wide shot, dais
The United Nations top humanitarian official today (25 Feb) announced the launch of an appeal for Ukraine and said, “we have not left, we are not leaving Ukraine,” adding “we're expanding our presence in Ukraine and scaling up efforts to help meet the needs of people affected across that country.”
Martin Griffiths, who is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said, “even before the recent events which have convulsed the world this week, there's been an eight-year-long conflict in eastern Ukraine and that meant nearly 3 million people in eastern Ukraine already needed humanitarian assistance before the recent days across both sides of the contact line and the UN, and our humanitarian partners, and the Red Cross movement, have been responding to that need these many years.”
Griffiths said, “we, like you, are seeing reports of shelling on urban centres and other communities across Ukraine with unconfirmed reports, unconfirmed as yet reports, of civilian casualties and damage to residential infrastructure.”
He expressed concern about reports of population movement “as men, women and children are fleeing in search, safety and protection.”
The humanitarian chief said, “I think it's fair to say that hundreds of thousands of people are on the move in Ukraine and out of Ukraine as we speak.”
Griffiths said the amount of the appeal – to be launched in Geneva - has not yet been determined, and noted that “yesterday, the Secretary General announced a $20 million allocation from the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund to scale up the immediate response. “
He said, “we need this because we're now beginning to realize that the scale of need in these very, very extraordinary circumstances is going to be of the highest.”
The UN official stressed that “we need the safe, unimpeded access and protection of our humanitarian workers and the deliveries that they will be doing that they will be resuming as soon as the security allows it to all areas of Ukraine affected by conflict.”
He said, “displacement, of course is going to be a huge issue inside and outside the country. But we also anticipate interruptions of basic services, interruptions of pensions, you know, we have yet to see the consequences of where this particular operation is going.”
Griffiths, who has worked in humanitarian operations since the 1970s, said, “I've been involved in contingency planning in Iraq, in Cambodia, in Yemen, in Syria, in many, many different parts of the world, in very big programs in Afghanistan. Contingency planning for what might or might not happen in Ukraine was of the highest degree of uncertainty.”
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