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STORY: UN / LEBANON POLITICAL HUMANITARIAN
TRT: 03:40
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 09 OCTOBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior UN Headquarters
09 OCTOBER 2024, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, press room dais
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Special Coordinator for Lebanon, United Nations:
“Lebanon finds itself facing a conflict and a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. Now, as you know, this afternoon, we are connecting from Beirut. And I can tell you without reservation that the situation is dire. Unrelenting bombardment is now part and parcel of daily life in Lebanon, with the latest blasts not even 30 minutes ago. Far too many people are paying an unimaginable price with over 2,000 killed, many more wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced.”
4. Wide shot, press room dais
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Special Coordinator for Lebanon, United Nations:
“Hezbollah, meanwhile, continues to launch rockets and missiles into Israel, preventing tens of thousands of Israelis from returning home. Now, it is clear that 7th October changed everything, including the threat perception in Israel. But what I want to stress today is that a continuation of the death and destruction we have seen so far will not, cannot bring about safety or security.”
6. Wide shot, press room dais
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Special Coordinator for Lebanon, United Nations:
“We need a realistic roadmap for the implementation by both sides of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, and this must include clear implementation and enforcement mechanisms. At the end of the day, it is the lack or non-implementation even of Resolution 1701 over the past 18 years that led to today's harsh reality.”
8. Wide shot, press room dais
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Imran Riza, Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, United Nations:
“Healthcare and frontline workers have come under attack, as have civil defence centres and water supply systems, pushing essential services to the brink of collapse. The killing of over 100 paramedics, healthcare workers, and public servants impairs Lebanon's emergency response capacity. This must stop. Even wars have rules.”
9. Wide shot, press room dais
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Imran Riza, Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, United Nations:
“The trauma, the fear, the anxiety here is very much about Gaza, whether we go on that route, whether that's where it's going right now. And you're asking about lessons; the lessons are to have member states really exert everything they can, on the one hand towards the ceasefire that the Special Coordinator has just been talking about. But in the meantime, respecting international humanitarian law, respecting protection of civilians, respecting that, protecting humanitarian workers, frontline workers and the like. And that is what we really need at this time.”
11. Wide shot, press room dais
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, Special Coordinator for Lebanon, United Nations:
“The question is not whether 1701 is still relevant. The question is how to implement it and how come it was not implemented in the past 18 years. And therefore, I am pushing, or hinting, or suggesting that a serious discussion on the implementation and enforcement mechanisms will take place. Because otherwise, even if there would be a ceasefire and we would agree on the full fermentation of 1701, then I mean, what we would like to avoid is a number of, is again, a period of relatively calm or return to the cessation of hostilities, and then after ten, 15, 18 years, we have a similar situation as we are facing today.”
13. Wide shot, end of presser
The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, today (9 Oct) said, “Lebanon finds itself facing a conflict and a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions,” and called for a “realistic roadmap for the implementation by both sides of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.”
Briefing from Beirut together with the Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, Hennis-Plasschaert said, “unrelenting bombardment is now part and parcel of daily life in Lebanon, with the latest blasts not even 30 minutes ago. Far too many people are paying an unimaginable price with over 2,000 killed, many more wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced.”
Meanwhile, she continued, Hezbollah, “continues to launch rockets and missiles into Israel, preventing tens of thousands of Israelis from returning home.”
The Special Coordinator said it was “clear that 7th October changed everything, including the threat perception in Israel,” but stressed that “a continuation of the death and destruction we have seen so far will not, cannot bring about safety or security.”
At the end of the day, she said, “it is the lack or non-implementation even of Resolution 1701 over the past 18 years that led to today's harsh reality.”
Riza for his part said, “healthcare and frontline workers have come under attack, as have civil defence centres and water supply systems, pushing essential services to the brink of collapse. The killing of over 100 paramedics, healthcare workers, and public servants impairs Lebanon's emergency response capacity.”
He said, “this must stop. Even wars have rules.”
Responding to a journalist’s question, the Humanitarian Coordinator said, “the trauma, the fear, the anxiety here is very much about Gaza, whether we go on that route, whether that's where it's going right now,” adding that “the lessons are to have member states really exert everything they can, on the one hand towards the ceasefire,” but in the meantime, “respecting international humanitarian law, respecting protection of civilians, respecting that, protecting humanitarian workers, frontline workers and the like. And that is what we really need at this time.”
Asked about whether 1701 was still relevant, Hennis-Plasschaert said, “the question is not whether 1701 is still relevant. The question is how to implement it and how come it was not implemented in the past 18 years. And therefore, I am pushing, or hinting, or suggesting that a serious discussion on the implementation and enforcement mechanisms will take place.”
“What we would like to avoid,” she continued, is “a period of relatively calm or return to the cessation of hostilities, and then after ten, 15, 18 years, we have a similar situation as we are facing today.”
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the past year, including at least 100 children and 300 women. At least 1 million people have been directly affected, many of them displaced – often multiple times -- enduring the loss of loved ones, homes, livelihoods and their sense of security.
More than 600,000 people are internally displaced across the country – over half of them women and girls. At least 350,000 children have been displaced in total. Most children remain out of school, with the start of the new year postponed to 4 November as 75 percent of the country’s public schools have been converted into shelters.
At least 185,000 people have sought refuge in 1,000 shelters – 80 percent of which are already at capacity.
And over 300,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries, such as Syria, and many of them are also moving to Iraq and Türkiye as well.
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