G77 and China, Ethiopia & others - Daily Press…

The Secretary-General spoke this morning at the virtual handover ceremony of the Chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China. He commended Guinea for its leadership throughout last year and congratulated Pakistan as it assumes the Chairmanship for this year.

The conflict in Ethiopia's north continues to lead to more people needing humanitarian relief. It also affects aid workers’ ability to respond. Fighting around the town of Abala, on the border between Tigray and Afar, is making it difficult for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to bring aid into Tigray.

The Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, will travel to Dubai today to attend, on behalf of the Secretary-General, the Global Goals Week at Expo 2020. The Deputy Secretary-General will return to New York on Monday.

The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, released $150 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to boost underfunded humanitarian operations in 13 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today issued a statement on the rocket attack last night in Baghdad, Iraq, in which a child and a woman were injured, and a school was damaged.

The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) today said that it is deeply concerned by recent incidents in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia that saw individuals glorify atrocity crimes and saw convicted war criminals target certain communities with hate speech, and, in some cases, directly incite violence.

This morning, our colleagues from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called for concerted international action to end armed conflict in the Central Sahel region. In the past decade, they said, conflict there has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes.

Latvia and Portugal have paid their dues in full, taking the tally to eight fully paid-up nations.