Biological Weapons Convention, Ethiopia, Ukraine…

The Secretary-General delivered remarks by video message to the 9th Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference, which is taking place in Geneva in Switzerland.

Turning to Ethiopia, our humanitarian colleagues tell us they have seen some gradual but tangible improvements in access into the Tigray region following the recent Cessation of Hostilities agreements. 

Turning to Ukraine. The Humanitarian Coordinator, Denise Brown, travelled over the weekend to Kherson and Mykolaiv, in the south of the country, to see the humanitarian situation in these two cities, meet authorities and monitor the response provided by aid organizations.  

Turning to the Central African Republic, you saw over the weekend that the Secretary-General strongly condemned the attack that took place on Thursday in the Obo airfield in the country’s south-east and resulted in the death of one peacekeeper from Morocco. 

Turning to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as you may be aware, the third round of consultations of the Nairobi peace process started today in Kenya.

You just heard from Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, who briefed the Security Council this morning. 

You will have seen that over the weekend on Venezuela.  The Secretary-General welcomed the agreement announced by the Government and the Unitary Platform of Venezuela in Mexico City to allocate state resources to health, food, education and electricity initiatives that provide social protection and humanitarian assistance to the population. 

A couple of things I want to flag for you. In Malawi our team, led by acting Resident Coordinator Maria Do Valle Ribeiro, today kicked off a campaign to support authorities in their cholera outbreak response.

The UN Children’s Fund today released its latest global snapshot on children and HIV and AIDS, showing that around 110,000 children and adolescents died from AIDs-related causes during 2021.