Transforming Education Summit, Haiti, Nigeria…

This morning, the Secretary-General spoke at the opening of the Leaders’ Day of the Transforming Education Summit.

Earlier in the day, the Secretary-General spoke at the Sustainable Development Goals Moment and said that we are living through a moment of great peril for our world, with crises such as climate change, rising costs of food and energy, and the ongoing effects of the pandemic. 

Turning to Haiti, our humanitarian colleagues are telling us that the overall situation continues to deteriorate but the weekend saw a relative lull in violence and most of the population was able to move and access markets.

From Nigeria, the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has released $10 million to urgently help people enduring a devastating food and nutrition crisis in the country’s north-east.

Turning to Syria, our humanitarian colleagues report that, over the weekend, we conducted a cross-line convoy of 16 trucks moved from Aleppo to north-west Syria.

From Sri Lanka, our UN team there, led by Resident Coordinator Hanaa Singer Hamdy, continues to support the Government and people of the country respond to the economic crisis there.

I just want to flag travel by a senior official: Christian Saunders, who recently took up the post as Special Coordinator on Improving the UN’s Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, is heading off for a week-long visit to the Central African Republic.

Yesterday morning, the Secretary-General addressed the inaugural meeting of the Global African Business Initiative.
He said this event is important because the world must see Africa for what it is: a land of enormous potential and resources.                     

Over the weekend, we issued a statement expressing the Secretary-General’s great concern at the escalation of violence along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border.  

Finally, just in time for the General Assembly, we have five new Member States inscribed on our paid-in-full list, and those are Ghana, Iraq, Oman, Paraguay, and the United Republic of Tanzania.