Secretary-General/Paris Summit, ECOSOC & other…

The Secretary-General met in Paris with Emmanuel Macron, the President of France. They discussed the objectives of the Paris Summit, including the importance of reforms to the international financial architecture, debt relief, access to liquidity as well as the urgent need for climate action and climate justice.   

This morning, the Secretary-General spoke, in a video message, to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Humanitarian Affairs Segment. He emphasized the urgent and unprecedented global humanitarian needs, noting that 360 million people worldwide require assistance. This is a 30 per cent increase from the previous year, with over 110 million forcibly displaced people and more than 260 million facing severe food insecurity.  

This morning, the Security Council held a meeting on Afghanistan. Briefing Council members, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Rosa Otunbayeva, said that the United Nations continues to face a complicated situation in Afghanistan. She noted that the April 5 restrictions against Afghan women working for the UN place a question mark over our activities across the country. 

The UN World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, Carl Skau, yesterday finished a visit to Afghanistan, where he saw first-hand WFP’s operations in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. He witnessed the impact of the latest restrictions on women’s employment and of an acute funding crisis which recently forced WFP to cut rations and drastically reduce the number of people it serves with lifesaving assistance. 

The Under-Secretary-General and UN Development Programme Administrator Achim Steiner, in his capacity as the Vice-Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, is in London representing the Secretary-General at the Ukraine Recovery Conference.  

The World Food Programme Representative and Country Director and the senior humanitarian on the ground, Matthew Hollingworth, condemned an attack on Kherson yesterday that killed and injured rescue workers from the State of Emergency Service of Ukraine.  

In a statement issued yesterday, the Secretary-General expressed disappointment at the slowing pace of inspections and the exclusion of the port of Yuzhny/Pivdennyi from the Black Sea Initiative. This has resulted in a reduction in the movement of vessels coming in and out of Ukrainian sea ports, leading to a drop in the supply of essential foodstuffs to global markets.  

Over the past four weeks, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has facilitated the movement of 438 trucks carrying some 17,000 tons of aid to different parts of Sudan. Fifty of those trucks moved during the first two days of the latest ceasefire.  

Yesterday afternoon, Nicholas Haysom, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), briefed the Security Council on challenges impeding the peace process in the country.  

Today is the International Day of Yoga.