Moldova, Ukraine, Syria & other topics - Daily…

The Secretary-General is in Vienna now, having wrapped up his visit to Moldova, where he met today with President Maia Sandu. 
 
We also have an update on Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of people continue to be uprooted by the war. The UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration today said that nearly 14 million people have been forced to leave their homes over the last couple of months.  
  
In Brussels today, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, urged donors to contribute to Syria at a time when $10.5 billion is needed this year to support Syrians, host communities and countries in need. 

The Government of the Netherlands and the United Nations will co-host a pledging event in The Hague tomorrow to support the UN-coordinated operational plan to address the threat of an oil spill from the FSO Safer, an aging tanker off Yemen’s Red Sea coast holding one million barrels of oil.
 
The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, MONUSCO, reports that yesterday, there was a new attack by alleged CODECO combatants against a displaced site in the province of Ituri.  The attack took place in Lodha yesterday evening and at least 14 people were killed.  

From South Sudan, the UN Mission has issued a new report which found that, despite an overall decrease in violence against civilians, cases of conflict-related sexual violence have more than doubled. Between January and March of this year, the Mission documented 63 cases of conflict-related sexual violence, up from 28 in the same time period last year. 
    
The UN Refugee Agency today said that it is gravely concerned about the ongoing violence and insecurity in northern Mozambique. UNHCR warned that conflict and displacement, compounded by extreme weather events, has led to surging protection needs – physical, material, and legal – for hundreds of thousands of affected refugees, internally displaced people, and people from host communities. 

I have an update for you on how our teams around the world are supporting countries responding to COVID-19. 
In Eswatini, more than 540,000 vaccine doses have arrived through COVAX, most of which have been administered. 

The Secretary-General spoke by video message to a conference on human rights, civil society and counter-terrorism in Spain.
 
The International Labour Organization today said that the annual rate of inflation worldwide, as measured by the consumer price index, accelerated to 9.2 per cent in March 2022, up from 7.5 per cent in February 2022.