Haiti, Sudan, South Sudan & other topics - Daily…

The Secretary-General arrived in Washington a short while ago, His first event will be a joint meeting with Senators Patty Murray and Susan Collins of the Senate Appropriations Committee. That will be followed by one with Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, Chairman of the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee. And then he will have separate meetings with House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro; Representative Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Representative Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Tomorrow morning, he will meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and, later in the day, Representative Chris Smith, Chairman, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations.

The Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, arrived this morning in Santiago, Chile, to participate in the opening of the sixth meeting of Latin America and the Caribbean Forum on Sustainable Development. Earlier today, Ms. Mohammed met with the President of Chile, Gabriel Boric. This afternoon, she will chair a meeting of the Regional Collaborative Platform, which includes all regional directors of the UN to review progress in our work in the region and seek solutions to boost results towards the Sustainable Development Goals. She will also meet with all Resident Coordinators in the region. Ms. Mohammed will also visit the indigenous community of Mahuidache where she will hear from indigenous people and leaders from different regions. 

This morning, Maria Isabel Salvador, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti, briefed the Security Council for the first time since assuming her new position at the beginning of the month. She said that gang violence is expanding at an alarming rate in areas previously considered relatively safe in Port-au-Prince, as well as outside the capital. 

Turning to Sudan. The Secretary-General told the Security Council yesterday that a prolonged, full-scale war in Sudan is unbearable to contemplate, and warned that the power struggle is not only putting that country’s future at risk, it is lighting a fuse that could detonate across its borders.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan, UNMISS, has supported the successful evacuation by air of some United Nations staff and aid workers from Darfur into South Sudan. 

I have an update from our team in Zambia, which is led by Resident Coordinator, Beatrice Mutali.The team is supporting authorities to tackle the droughts and floods which have affected more than 373,000 people. Various UN agencies are providing relief to over 1 million households in the form of cash transfers, health insurance, livelihood training, and sexual and reproductive health services. 

And in Honduras our team, led by Resident Coordinator Alice Shackelford, expressed their deep concern about the current situation in various health centres in the country, where access to services has been limited due to the seizing of facilities by protesting groups. 

And staying in the region, in Venezuela, the World Food Programme today said that it is expanding its school meals programme to include hot meals for 16,000 school children and staff in over one hundred schools in Falcón state. 

In a video message to the closing ceremony of the International Year of Sustainable Mountain Development 2022, the Secretary-General noted that the year has been a great opportunity to place the sustainability and resilience of mountain ecosystems and communities at the heart of the international system.

Today, we are marking a couple of international days.  
26 April was designated as International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day in December 2016, by a General Assembly resolution. The General Assembly recognized in the resolution that three decades after the disaster there remain persistent serious long-term consequences and that the affected communities and territories are experiencing continuing related needs.
And today is also World Intellectual Property Day. This year we celebrate the “can do” attitude of women inventors, creators and entrepreneurs around the world and their ground-breaking work.