Ukraine & other topics - Daily Press Briefing

Rosemary DiCarlo, the Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, briefed the Security Council via videoconference from Munich, in Germany, where she is accompanying the Secretary-General who is attending the Munich Security Conference.
 
Our Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, is concluding her visit to Haiti today. This morning, she took part in the Technical Conference on Cholera Elimination.
 
The high-level pledging event for Yemen will take place on 16 March and will be virtually co-hosted by the United Nations and the Governments of Sweden and Switzerland.

The humanitarian situation in the northern region of Afar continues to deteriorate due to the ongoing conflict. Due to insecurity, the UN and our partners are unable to access many of the sites where those displaced by the fighting have taken shelter.
 
Today, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Government and the humanitarian community launched the country’s Humanitarian Response Plan for 2022. The Plan is seeking $1.88 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to 8.8 million vulnerable people.
 
Turning to the Sahel, the World Food Programme (WFP) is telling us the region is currently experiencing some of its driest conditions in many years.

From Cameroon, the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator there, Mathias Naab – together with the UN team and humanitarian partners – condemned the recent attacks that destroyed schools in the country. There have been two recent incidents that are the latest among a series of attacks on students, education staff and premises.
 
In a new report released today, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi says that wildfires are burning more severely and more often, urban noise pollution is growing into a global public health menace, and phenological mismatches – disruptions in the timing of life-cycle stages in natural systems – are causing ecological consequences.

An update on COVID-19 today, from Mongolia, where our Resident Coordinator Tapan Mishra is leading the team, which continues to support authorities to address the impacts of the pandemic.
 
The Secretary-General has appointed Ted Chaiban of Lebanon as Global Lead Coordinator for COVID-19 Vaccine Country-Readiness and Delivery, at the level of Assistant Secretary-General, in UNICEF.

Lastly, we want to thank our friends who may be far away, but they have paid their budget dues in full: New Zealand. They bring up the total of fully-paid Member States to 57.