“Food diversion is absolutely unacceptable,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, following a joint statement made by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and USAID announcing their commitment to addressing deeply concerning revelations of aid diversion.
“While we will temporarily halt food aid assistance in Ethiopia, nutrition assistance to children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, school meals programmes, and activities for building the resilience of farmers and pastoralists will continue uninterrupted,” she said, welcoming the Ethiopian Government’s commitment to investigate and hold accountable those responsible.
Widespread theft
Over the past months, large aid deliveries have been stolen, according to media reports.
“Our first concern is the millions of hungry people who depend on our support, and our teams will work tirelessly with all partners to resume our operations as soon as we can ensure that food reaches the people who need it the most,” the SFP chief said.
More than 20 million people in Ethiopia urgently need humanitarian food assistance, as the long-lasting effects of conflict and drought continue, according to the agency.
“WFP is working closely with its UN and humanitarian partners and local stakeholders to reform the way assistance is delivered across Ethiopia and in all high-risk operational contexts where we work,” she said, adding that the agency takes this issue very seriously and will take every necessary step to ensure that critical food assistance reaches those who need it most.
Some 1.6 million people in Rakhine, Chin, Magway, Sagaing, and Kachin states are in dire need of assistance after Mocha’s 250 kilometre per hour wind gusts destroyed homes, farmland and livestock.
Speaking from hard-hit Rakhine State capital Sittwe, UN Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Myanmar, Titon Mitra, said that time was of the essence as food reserves were being “completely wiped out”, water sources needed to be urgently decontaminated and the monsoon was just “a matter of weeks away”.
Dire need for access
“The international community has to be given widespread access to the affected communities. And that’s a very urgent requirement,” he said.
Last month, the UN launched a $333 million Flash Appeal for Myanmar. While some assistance is coming through, Mr. Mitra said that it was “not anywhere near sufficient” for the time being due to a lack of access and support in rural areas remained “far from adequate”.
“Some regional donors have already provided some support and that’s been channelled through the military logistics as CSOs (civil society organizations) and UN organizations have got limited access at the moment,” Mr. Mitra said.
‘Depoliticization, demilitarization’ of aid
The UN official highlighted that a distribution plan has been submitted to the military authorities, stressing that “it needs to be cleared very soon, so international organizations with their CSO partners can move freely”.
More than two years since Myanmar’s generals staged a military coup, sparking widespread ongoing civil unrest and violence, Mr. Mitra insisted that “this really is a time for the depoliticization and the demilitarization of aid, because the needs are absolutely immense”.
Rural livelihoods in jeopardy
The recovery may take years, he added, pointing out that the majority of those affected were already “the poorest of the poor”.
Concerns are also mounting fast about the future of rural livelihoods, as some 1,200 square kilometres of land flooded due to Mocha, while rains combined with storm surges devastated agriculture and fisheries.
A local resident cleans up the extensive damage to his shop caused by Cyclone Mocha in Sittwe, Rakhine state, Myanmar.
Looming food security crisis
Mr. Mitra warned that the provision of relief itself was “not enough” and that if people are unable to plant food crops within the next few weeks, there could be a “major food crisis” emerging in the coming months.
“Households have completely lost their seed stocks. So we are anticipating, unless there’s an effective response, that food availability and affordability will become huge issues,” he insisted.
Earlier this week, the UN included Myanmar in a list of 18 “hunger hotspots” where critical food insecurity is projected to intensify.
‘Cycle of suffering’
Already before Mocha hit, 80 per cent of people in Rakhine were living in poverty and 200,000 were internally displaced. In 2022, half of the state’s population were cutting down on meals due to the economic crisis, according to UNDP data.
If swift action by the international community did not materialize, “we risk perpetuating an unending cycle of suffering”, Mr. Mitra warned.
The number fleeing violence in Sudan since fighting between rival militaries began in mid-April in Khartoum, quickly destabilizing the entire country, has now topped 100,000.
The majority of arrivals in eastern Chad – particularly Ouaddaï, Sila, and Wadi Fira provinces – are from the Darfur region, which has been deeply impacted by violence for decades, reminded UNHCR.
Thousands more on the move
“Reports from our teams on the border indicate that new waves of arrivals are still ongoing”, the agency said in a press release, estimating that up to 200,000 people may be forced to flee to eastern Chad in the coming three months.
UNHCR and its partners have been working closely with the Chadian government, providing support and coordinating the emergency response to address the needs of the newly arrived refugees.
Laura Lo Castro, UNHCR Representative in Chad, said humanitarians had “been working around the clock providing protection services, including specialized assistance to survivors of violence and children at risk, constructing boreholes and well, installing emergency latrines, running mobile clinics, organizing complex relocation convoys, scaling up camps capacity to accommodate newly arrived refugees in existing refugee camps, building family shelters and community infrastructures and we are starting to build new camps.”
The agency said the rainy season was fast approaching, requiring a massive logistical exercise to move refugees from border areas for their safety and protection.
Scrambling to build new camps
“We need to establish immediately new camps and extension of existing camps”, the agency said. “As host populations are gravely affected by the situation in Sudan, some assistance will need to be extended to the most vulnerable among the host population.”
UNHCR stressed that more funding was essential to provide lifesaving interventions.
Long-standing crisis
Prior to this crisis, Chad already hosted nearly 589,000 refugees, including 409,819 Sudanese fleeing conflict in Darfur, as of March 2023.
Nearly 128,000 refugees are in the country from the Central African Republic; 21,287 Nigerians escaping violence by Boko Haram, are present in the Lake region; 28,311 Cameroonians affected by inter-communal tensions, and 1,507 refugees from other nations.
Tens of thousands of refugees have arrived in Chad from Sudan.
Additionally, an estimated 381,289 Chadians are internally displaced, primarily in the Lake Chad Province.
Displaced communities continue to face insecurity in Chad and neighboring countries, compounded by food insecurity, malnutrition, the effects of climate change, and a lack of livelihood opportunities.
The protracted nature of displacement has strained services, natural resources, and social cohesion, said UNHCR.
‘Beacon of hope’
“For families uprooted by the crisis, the humanitarian assistance is their beacon of hope”, added Ms Lo Castro. We rely on the compassion and generosity of our partners to rally together to ensure the provision of critical protection and life-saving support. Together, we can save lives and restore dignity to those in desperate need”.
There is a need for $214.1 million urgently, to provide lifesaving protection and assistance to Chad’s forcibly displaced, which includes $72.4 million for the emergency response for refugees fleeing conflict in Sudan, reiterated UNHCR.
WFP’s Country Director in Sudan, Eddie Rowe, told reporters in Geneva that in a major breakthrough, the agency distributed food assistance to 15,000 people in both Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) controlled areas of Omdurman, part of the Khartoum metropolitan area, beginning on Saturday.
Speaking from Port Sudan, Mr. Rowe highlighted other recent food distributions, in Wadi Halfa in Northern State to reach 8,000 people fleeing Khartoum and on their way to Egypt, as well as to 4,000 newly displaced people in Port Sudan.
Rapidly scaling up support
In total, WFP has been able to reach 725,000 people across 13 states in the country since it resumed its operations on 3 May, following a pause brought on by the killing of three aid workers at the start of the conflict.
Mr. Rowe said that WFP was rapidly scaling up its support, which they expected to expand depending on progress in negotiations for humanitarian access for all regions, including the Darfurs and Kordofans, strongly impacted by violence and displacement.
Hunger on the rise
In addition to the 16 million Sudanese who were already finding it “very difficult to afford a meal a day” before the fighting started, Mr. Rowe warned that the conflict compounded by the upcoming hunger season, could increase the food insecure population by about 2.5 million people in the coming months.
With the lean season fast approaching, WFP’s plan was to reach 5.9 million people across Sudan over the next six months, he said.
He stressed that WFP needed a total of $730 million to provide required assistance as well as telecommunications and logistics services to the humanitarian community, including all of the UN agencies operating in Sudan.
17,000 tonnes of food lost to looting
He also reiterated the humanitarian community’s call on all parties to the conflict to enable the safe delivery of urgently needed food aid, and deplored that so far, WFP had lost about 17,000 metric tonnes of food to widespread looting across the country, particularly in the Darfurs.
Just two days ago, he said, the agency’s main hub in El Obeid, North Kordofan, came under threat and looting of assets and vehicles was already confirmed.
Over 13 million children in need
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that “more children in Sudan today require lifesaving support than ever before”, with 13.6 million children in need of urgent assistance. “That’s more than the entire population of Sweden, of Portugal, of Rwanda,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva.
According to reports received by UNICEF, hundreds of girls and boys have been killed in the fighting. “While we are unable to confirm these due to the intensity of the violence, we also have reports that thousands of children have been maimed,” Mr. Elder said.
‘Death sentence’
He also pointed out that reports of children killed or injured are only those who had contact with a medical facility, meaning that the reality is “no doubt much worse” and compounded by a lack of access to life-saving services including nutrition, safe water, and healthcare.
Mr. Elder alerted that “all these factors combined, risk becoming a death sentence, especially for the most vulnerable”.
UNICEF called for funding to the tune of $838 million to address the crisis, an increase of $253 million since the current conflict began in April, to reach 10 million children. Mr. Elder stressed that only 5 per cent of the required amount had been received so far, and that without the therapeutic food and vaccines which this money would allow to secure, children would be dying.
Healthcare under attack
The dire situation of healthcare in the country has been aggravated by continuing attacks on medical facilities. From the start of the conflict on 15 till 25 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) verified 45 attacks on healthcare, which led to eight deaths and 18 injuries, the agency’s spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said.
He also cited reports of military occupation of hospitals and medical supplies warehouses, which made it impossible for people in need to access chronic disease medicines or malaria treatment. Mr. Jašarević recalled that attacks on healthcare are a violation of international humanitarian law and must stop.
Keep borders open: Grandi
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, concluded a three-day visit to Egypt on Tuesday, with an urgent call for support for people fleeing Sudan – and the countries hosting them – insisting that the borders must remain open.
More than 170,000 people have entered Egypt since the conflict started – many through Qoustul, a border crossing that Grandi visited close to the end of his trip. The country hosts around half of the more than 345,000 people who have recently fled Sudan.
Mr. Grandi met newly arrived refugees and Egyptian border officials, to get a sense of the hardships being endured.
Loss ‘on a huge scale’
“I heard harrowing experiences: loss of life and property on a huge scale,” Grandi said. “People spoke of risky and expensive journeys to arrive here to safety. Many families have been torn apart. They are traumatized and urgently need our protection and support.“
The UNHCR chief also held talks with the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, and discussed how best to support refugees and mobilize resources for host countries, not least Egypt.
“I commend Egypt for its long-standing commitment to providing a safe haven to those fleeing violence,” Mr. Grandi said. “The Government, the Egyptian Red Cresent and the people, have been very generous in supporting arrivals. We urgently need to mobilize more resources to help them to maintain this generosity.”
Prior to this conflict, Egypt was already host to a large refugee population of 300,000 people from 55 different nationalities.
After registering with UNHCR, refugees and asylum-seekers have access to a wide range of services including health and education. UNHCR’s emergency cash assistance programme started during the last week.
“I can’t think of a better way than using food to bring everyone to the table,” said Elroi Yee, an investigative reporter and producer of the Dari Dapur campaign. “We need shared stories that show migrants and refugees have a place in the Malaysian narratives.”
Tales and tastes of Tamil puttu, Cambodia’s nom banh chok, Kachin jungle food shan ju, Yemeni chicken mandy, and Rohingya flatbread ludifida flavour those narratives, telling their stories in Dari Dapur’s videos featuring Malaysian celebrities who sampled culinary history and heritage.
Launched by OHCHR in December 2022, the campaign partnered with untitled kompeni, a Kuala Lumpur-based social impact production team, with a view to putting these delicious stories at the heart of public discourse.
‘Food always brings people to the table’
Through seven short videos, celebrities visited the kitchens of migrant workers and refugees to share a home-cooked meal around the same table, hearing about each other’s lives, hopes and dreams, and learning what they have in common.
“Anytime you cook food and you bring your guests, everyone turns to smile and be happy because food always brings people to the table,” said Chef Wan in an episode with Hameed, who served up a scrumptious Pakistani ayam korma.
“Regardless of which culture, where we come from, everybody will need to eat,” he said.
Plantation day trip
Liza, a Cambodian plantation worker, shared more than just a meal with her guests, Malaysian comedian Kavin Jay and food Instagrammer Elvi. During a day trip to visit her on the plantation, Liza showed them how she cooks nom banh chok, a fragrant fermented rice noodle dish.
“To have someone come here to visit me, to see me and to see my friends, I’m so happy,” Liza said.
Exchanging jokes around the table, Mr. Jay said “everyone has a migration story”.
“It doesn’t matter what your race is, if you look back far enough, you will find your migration story,” he said.
Similar exchanges around dinner tables unfolded in other Dari Dapur episodes that starred migrant and refugee chefs with social justice influencer Dr. Hartini Zainudin, hijabi rapper Bunga, educator Samuel Isaiah, Tamil film star Yasmin Nadiah, Chinese-language radio DJ Chrystina, and politician and activist Nurul Izzah Anwar.
‘It’s exactly the same!’
From Myanmar to Malaysia, breaking fast was common ground in an episode that brought broadcast journalist Melisa Idris and US Ambassador Brian McFeeters tableside with Ayesha, a Rohingya community trainer.
“I would like to know them, and I am also very happy that I can explain what I am doing and who I am [to them],” Ayesha said, as she prepared an iftar feast for her guests.
Sitting them down at a table laden with traditional dishes along with some of her friends, Ayesha was frank.
“Before this, I’ve never cooked for other communities,” she admitted, ahead of a lively conversation about Eid celebrations.
Ms. Idris and Ayesha’s friend, Rokon, shared similar childhood memories, from her Malaysian village and to his family home in Rakhine, Myanmar.
The way they treated me today, if we could be as gracious a host as a country, it would go such a long way. – journalist Melisa Idris
“It’s exactly the same!” Ms. Idris exclaimed. “Sometimes we focus on the differences and don’t realize we have almost exactly the same traditions.”
Post-feast, she shared gratitude and a revelation.
She said it was clear how “complicit the media has been in othering refugees and migrants, in normalizing the hate, in sowing the division, and targeting an already marginalized community as a scapegoat of our fears during a pandemic.”
“They gave us the best; they gave everything to us,” she said, tearfully. “The way they treated me today, if we could be as gracious a host as a country, it would go such a long way.”
‘Cut through the noise’
To design the campaign, OHCHR commissioned research that revealed a complex relationship between migrants and Malaysians. Findings showed respondents overwhelmingly agreeing that respect for human rights is a sign of a decent society and that everyone deserves equal rights in the country.
Some 63 per cent agreed that their communities are stronger when they support everyone, and more than half believed they should help other people no matter who they are or where they come from. Around 35 per cent of respondents strongly or somewhat strongly believed that people fleeing persecution or war should be welcomed, with an equal number wanting to welcome those who are unable to obtain healthcare, education, food, or decent work.
“Migration is a complicated and often abstract issue for many Malaysians,” said Pia Oberoi, senior advisor on migration in the Asia Pacific region at OHCHR, “but storytelling is a good way to cut through the noise.”
Cow’s feet and camaraderie
“Our research found that people want to hear and see the everyday lives of people on the move, to understand and appreciate that we have more in common than what divides us,” she said, adding that the campaign was built on shared realities and values that personify the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which turns 75 this year.
With the production of these short films, she said “we hope to inspire Malaysian storytellers to share the narrative space, and for all of us to rethink the way we relate to our migrant and refugee neighbours.”
On a sprawling oil palm estate, actress Lisa Surihani tucked into a meal of kaldu kokot – cow’s feet soup – dished up by her host Suha, an Indonesian plantation worker.
“What I learned was ‘try and not let what you do not know of affect the way you treat other human beings’,” actress Lisa Surihani said in a Dari Dapur episode.
“No matter who it is, our actions should be rooted in kindness,” Ms. Surihani said.
Period poverty, or the inability to afford menstrual products, is a serious issue especially in developing countries, an issue menstruating girls and women grapple with monthly and a spotlight topic on Menstrual Hygiene Day, observed annually on 28 May.
“I’m happy to come work here because I meet and work with other people,” said Ms. Fatty, who operates a special machine to install snaps on each pad. “This place gives me joy because I can forget about my disability while working here.”
The sturdy, long-lasting pads she produces help women like her with a mobility impairment, who have trouble going to the restroom. After working there for a year, Ms. Fatty hopes to continue. While her disabilities bring many challenges and she struggled to make ends meet for a long time, her life has become better since she joined the project.
Keeping girls in school
In The Gambia, Africa’s smallest nation, period poverty is prevalent across the country, but it hits harder in rural areas, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Some girls skip school for around five days every month due to the lack of menstrual products and sanitary facilities.
The girls are afraid of staining their clothes and become a target of bullying or abuse, the agency said. As a result, gender inequality widens; boys will have an advantage as they attend school more often than girls, who have a higher chance of dropping out of education.
To tackle this problem, UNFPA developed a project in Basse, in the country’s Upper River Region, to produce recyclable sanitary pads. These pads are distributed at schools and hospitals in local communities.
The agency takes it as an opportunity to talk about bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health with young girls to mitigate period shaming and stigma.
Empowering young women
The project is also a way of empowering young women in the community as it provides them with a secure job and an opportunity to learn new skills.
United Nations
SDG Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
Since 2014, Menstrual Hygiene Day has been observed on the 28th day of the fifth month of the year as menstrual cycles average 28 days in length and people menstruate an average of five days each month.
Poor menstrual health and hygiene undercuts fundamental rights – including the right to work and go to school – for women, girls and people who menstruate, according to UNFPA.
It also worsens social and economic inequalities, the agency said. In addition, insufficient resources to manage menstruation, as well as patterns of exclusion and shame, undermine human dignity. Gender inequality, extreme poverty, humanitarian crises and harmful traditions can amplify deprivation and stigma.
With that in mind, the theme for Menstrual Hygiene Day this year is “Making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030”, said UNFPA Executive-Director Natalia Kanem.
“A girl’s first period should be a happy fact of life, a sign of coming of age with dignity,” she said. “She should have access to everything necessary to understand and care for her body and attend school without stigma or shame.”
The Day brings together governments, non-profits, the private sector, and individuals to promote good menstrual health and hygiene for everyone in the world. The occasion also aims at breaking the silence, raise awareness around menstrual issues and engaging decision-makers to take actions for better menstrual health and hygiene.
Learn more about what UNFPA is doing to eliminate period poverty here.
Eliminating period poverty
UNFPA has four broad approaches to promoting and improving menstrual health around the world:
Supplies and safe bathrooms: In 2017, 484,000 dignity kits, containing pads, soap and underwear, were distributed in 18 countries affected by humanitarian emergencies. UNFPA also helps to improve the safety in displacement camps, distributing flashlights and installing solar lights in bathing areas. Promoting menstrual health information and skills-building, projects include teaching girls to make reusable menstrual pads or raising awareness about menstrual cups.
Improving education and information: Through its youth programmes and comprehensive sexuality education efforts, UNFPA helps both boys and girls understand that menstruation is healthy and normal.
Supporting national health systems: Efforts include promoting menstrual health and provide treatment to girls and women suffering from menstrual disorders. The agency also procures reproductive health commodities that can be useful for treating menstruation-related disorders.
Gathering data and evidence about menstrual health and its connection to global development: A long overlooked topic of research, UNFPA-supported surveys provide critical insight into girls’ and women’s knowledge about their menstrual cycles, health, and access to sanitation facilities.
This feature, which focuses on the illegal trade in substandard and fake medicines, is part of a UN News series exploring the fight against trafficking in the Sahel.
From ineffective hand sanitizer to fake antimalarial pills, an illicit trade that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is being meticulously dismantled by the UN and partner countries in Africa’s Sahel region.
Substandard or fake medicines, like contraband baby cough syrup, are killing almost half a million sub-Saharan Africans every year, according to a threat assessment report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The report explains how nations in the Sahel, a 6,000-kilometre-wide swath stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, which is home to 300 million people, are joining forces to stop fake medicines at their borders and hold the perpetrators accountable.
Health care is scarce in the region, which has among the world’s highest incidence of malaria and where infectious diseases are one of the leading causes of death.
“This disparity between the supply of and demand for medical care is at least partly filled by medicines supplied from the illegal market to treat self-diagnosed diseases or symptoms,” the report says, explaining that street markets and unauthorized sellers, especially in rural or conflict-affected areas, are sometimes the only sources of medicines and pharmaceutical products.
Fake treatments with fatal results
The study shows that the cost of the illegal medicine trade is high, in terms of health care and human lives.
Fake or substandard antimalarial medicines kill as many as 267,000 sub-Saharan Africans every year. Nearly 170,000 sub-Saharan African children die every year from unauthorized antibiotics used to treat severe pneumonia.
Caring for people who have used falsified or substandard medical products for malaria treatment in sub-Saharan Africa costs up to $44.7 million every year, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.
Motley trafficking
Corruption is one of the main reasons that the trade is allowed to flourish.
About 40 per cent of substandard and falsified medical products reported in Sahelian countries between 2013 and 2021 land in the regulated supply chain, the report showed. Products diverted from the legal supply chain typically come from such exporting nations as Belgium, China, France, and India. Some end up on pharmacy shelves.
The perpetrators are employees of pharmaceutical companies, public officials, law enforcement officers, health agency workers and street vendors, all motivated by potential financial gain, the report found.
Traffickers are finding ever more sophisticated routes, from working with pharmacists to taking their crimes online, according to a UNODC research brief on the issue.
While terrorist groups and non-State armed groups are commonly associated with trafficking in medical products in the Sahel, this mainly revolves around consuming medicines or levying “taxes” on shipments in areas under their control.
Snip supply, meet demand
Efforts are under way to adopt a regional approach to the problem, involving every nation in the region. For example, all Sahel countries except Mauritania have ratified a treaty to establish an African medicines agency, and the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization initiative, launched by the African Union in 2009, aims at improving access to safe, affordable medicine.
All the Sahel countries have legal provisions in place relating to trafficking in medical products, but some laws are outdated, UNODC findings showed. The agency recommended, among other things, revised legislation alongside enhanced coordination among stakeholders.
Custom and law enforcement officers prevent huge quantities of contraband from entering the markets of destination countries.
States taking action
Law enforcement and judicial efforts that safeguard the legal supply chain should be a priority, said UNODC, pointing to the seizure of some 605 tonnes of fake medicines between 2017 to 2021 by authorities in the region.
Operation Pangea, for example, coordinated by UN partner INTERPOL in 90 countries, targeted online sales of pharmaceutical products. Results saw seizures of unauthorized antivirals rise by 18 per cent and unauthorized chloroquine, to treat malaria, by 100 per cent.
“Transnational organized crime groups take advantage of gaps in national regulation and oversight to peddle substandard and falsified medical products,” UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly said. “We need to help countries increase cooperation to close gaps, build law enforcement and criminal justice capacity, and drive public awareness to keep people safe.”
Following the death of 70 children in The Gambia in 2022, the World Health Organization identified four contaminated paediatric medicines in the West African nation.
Ahead of World No Tobacco Day on Wednesday 31 May, WHO deplored that 3.2 million hectares of fertile land across 124 countries are being used to grow deadly tobacco – even in places where people are starving.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that governments across the world “spend millions supporting tobacco farms”, and that choosing to grow food instead of tobacco would allow the world to “prioritize health, preserve ecosystems, and strengthen food security for all”.
Disaster for food, environmental security
The agency’s new report, “Grow food, not tobacco”, recalls that a record 349 million people are facing acute food insecurity, many of them in some 30 countries on the African continent, where tobacco cultivation has increased by 15 per cent in the last decade.
According to WHO, nine of the 10 largest tobacco cultivators are low and middle-income countries. Tobacco farming compounds these countries’ food security challenges by taking up arable land. The environment and the communities which rely on it also suffer, as the crop’s expansion drives deforestation, contamination of water sources and soil degradation.
Vicious cycle of dependence
The report also exposes the tobacco industry for trapping farmers in a vicious cycle of dependence and exaggerating the economic benefits of tobacco as a cash crop.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Friday, Dr. Rüdiger Krech, WHO’s Director for Health Promotion, warned that tobacco’s economic importance is a “myth that we urgently need to dispel”.
He said that the crop contributes less than 1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in most tobacco-growing countries, and that the profits go to the world’s major cigarette-makers, while farmers struggle under the burden of debt contracted with the tobacco companies.
‘Smokers, think twice’
Dr. Krech also explained that tobacco farmers find themselves exposed to nicotine poisoning and dangerous pesticides. The broader impact on communities and whole societies is devastating, as some 1.3 million child labourers are estimated to be working on tobacco farms instead of going to school, he said.
“The message to smokers is, think twice”, Dr. Krech said, as consuming tobacco came down to supporting an iniquitous situation in which farmers and their families were suffering.
Workers at a tobacco factory in Malawi fill processing machinery with coal. (file)
Breaking the cycle
WHO, along with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have joined forces around the Tobacco Free Farms initiative, to help thousands of farmers in countries like Kenya and Zambia to grow sustainable food crops instead of tobacco.
The programme provides farmers with microcredit lending to pay off their debts with tobacco companies, as well as knowledge and training to grow alternative crops, and a market for their harvest, thanks to WFP’s local procurement initiatives.
Dr. Krech said that the programme was a “proof of concept” of the power of the UN system to enable farmers to break free from harmful tobacco cultivation. He outlined ambitious plans to expand the programme, as countries in Asia and South America were already requesting support.
“We can help every farmer in the world to get out of tobacco farming if they wish,” he said.
Volker Türk was issuing a clarion call to protect and expand civic space, arguing that it’s the only way to enable us all “to play a role in political, economic, and social life, at all levels, from local to global.”
Hate speech going unchecked
He said with more and more decision-making migrating online, “with private companies playing an outsized role, having an open, safe digital public square has never been more important”.
And yet, States are struggling and “often failing” to protect online space for the common good, “swinging between a laissez-faire approach that has allowed violence and dangerous hate speech to go unchecked, and overbroad regulations used as a cudgel against those exercising their free speech rights, including journalists and human rights defenders,” he added.
Invest in multilingual markets
He called on big business to step up and increase investment in preventing and responding to online harms, especially in the non-English language environment, stressing that “doing business in any location requires making sure you can do so safely, in line with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”
The UN rights chief said that carving out civic space was key to human rights, to peace, development, and for “sustainable and resilient societies”, but coming under more and more pressure from undue restrictions, and laws.
This includes crackdowns on peaceful assembly, internet shutdowns and bullying and harassment online.
Expand space as a ‘precondition’
“States must step up efforts to protect and expand civic space as the precondition for people to be able to sustainably enjoy all other entitlements enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from access to healthcare and clean water and quality education to social protection and labour rights”, Mr. Türk argued.
Pressure on civil space continues despite the inspiring commitment of civil society groups, he continued.
“Civil society is a key enabler of trust between governments and the populations they serve and is often the bridge between the two. For governments to reduce barriers to public participation, they must protect this space, for the benefit of all – both online and offline”.
“The escalating war is taking a heavy toll on civilians who live close to the front lines, people who cannot go back to their homes, and people across the country living under almost daily threats of attacks,” said Jens Laerke, from the UN’s humanitarian affairs office, OCHA.
More than a year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, mine contamination and lack of access to Russia-controlled areas remain obstacles to reaching those in need, he said.
Delivering emergency assistance
Assistance has included cash to more than 2.1 million people and food for 3.5 million people, while nearly 3 million gained access to health services and medicines, Mr. Laerke said.
The assistance also included support for survivors of gender-based violence, he said, adding that more than 60 per cent of those reached with aid are women and girls.
Other types of assistance include access to clean water and hygiene products, emergency shelter, education services for children, and protection services, including prevention of gender-based violence and support to survivors, he said.
Volunteers play vital role
“Hundreds of humanitarian organizations are involved in this effort working with local groups and community-based volunteers who play a vital role in getting the assistance delivered on the last mile,” he said.
However, assistance to areas under Russian military control remains extremely limited, he said.
This year, because of the worsening security situation and shifts in the front lines, humanitarian partners have lost access to almost 60,000 people in around 40 towns and villages close to the front lines in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, he said.
Mine action casualties
At the same time, mines and explosive remnants of war in Ukraine have left 263 killed or injured in 2023. That is more than 50 per month on average, according to the UN human rights office, OHCHR, which believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.
The agency’s latest report indicates that from 1 to 21 May, 46 civilians were killed or injured by mines, 44 in April, 102 in March, 36 in February and 35 in January.
Mine contamination remains a deadly threat to farmers and humanitarians delivering assistance. In the agricultural regions of Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Kherson, dozens of mine-related accidents are being reported every month, Mr. Laerke said.
Denise Brown, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said recovery work hinges on demining.
“Ukraine is considered as one of the most mine-contaminated countries in the world,” she said. “Demining agricultural land is one of the Government’s priorities so that farmers can get back to work, and the UN, through WFP World Food Programme] and FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization], working with the Ministry of Agriculture, are contributing to this.”
Learn more about what the UN is doing to help the people of Ukraine here.
UNDP Ukraine/Oleksandr Simonenko
A deminer for the State Emergency Service of Ukraine sweeps the ground for unexploded ordnance and landmines.
“The United Nations and its partners made strides in rolling back the worst food insecurity last year, but these gains remain fragile, and 17 million people are still food insecure in Yemen,” said David Gressly, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the country.
Compared to the same period in 2022, the levels of acutely malnourished people rose in 2023, indicating a need for more funding to stave off extreme hunger, according to the latest findings of a new report by three UN agencies that are closely monitoring the situation, following eight years of intense warfare.
Drivers of hunger
Yemen remains one of the most food insecure countries globally, mainly driven by the impact of conflict and economic decline, according to the report from the UN food agency, FAO, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The integrated phase classification (IPC) analysis provides an outlook for the period between now until the end of this year, indicating the need for more programme investments, as the modest improvements may be eroded, the agencies said.
Their report showed that the people of Yemen continue to require attention, with hunger stalking millions. The agencies cautioned that the situation could worsen if nothing is done to address the key drivers of food insecurity.
The new report showed that between January and May 2023, about 3.2 million people experienced high levels of acute food insecurity in government-controlled areas, representing a 23 per cent reduction from the period between October and December 2022.
During the June to December 2023 period, the report estimated that the number of people likely to experience high levels of acute food insecurity could increase to 3.9 million, out of which 2.8 million people are projected to reach crisis levels of hunger.
Life-saving interventions
FAO Yemen representative Hussein Gadain, said the agency is focused, through various interventions, on improving household food security and income by strengthening agricultural production practices, increasing labour opportunities, and diversifying livelihoods in a sustainable way that fosters peaceful coexistence.
We are working directly with farmers on the ground to enable them to maintain their livelihoods,” he said. “We make sure that smallholder farmers in Yemen will withstand any shocks which impact food security.”
UNICEF and partners reached around 420,000 children suffering from severe and acute malnutrition with life-saving interventions in 2022, said the agency’s Yemen representative, Peter Hawkins.
“This is the highest ever reached in Yemen, thanks to the scale-up of nutrition services,” he said, adding that despite this, malnutrition levels remain critical in many areas of the southern governorates.
“A multisectoral approach to address all forms of malnutrition is essential and together with partners UNICEF is strengthening the provision of primary health care, including early detection and treatment of severe acute malnutrition”, he said.
Averting famine
The UN food agency’s assistance is critical for getting people to firmer ground, for averting crisis and famine, said WFP Country Director, Richard Ragan. Yemen’s food insecurity situation remains fragile, and the hard-won gains of the past 12 months will be lost without continued and urgent support, he said.
“There are women, men, and children behind these IPC statistics, whose lives straddle the fine line between hope and utter devastation,” he said, urging donors to renew their commitment to supporting the most vulnerable Yemenis. “We simply cannot take our foot off the gas now.”
Learn more about what the UN is doing to help the people of Yemen here.
The finding is the result of a survey conducted by the UNICEF Refugee Response Office in Poland, which also revealed that 53 per cent had considered getting, or had already accessed, mental health support since arriving in the country.
‘Not a surprise’
“The psychosocial toll of the war in Ukraine is immense so the results of this survey are not a surprise,” said Dr. Rashed Mustafa Sarwar, who heads the Office, which was established just weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, more than four million Ukrainians have registered for temporary protection across Europe, UNICEF said. More than 1.6 million are in Poland, 90 per cent of whom are women and children, though overall refugee numbers could be much higher.
The survey used a World Health Organization (WHO) self-reporting questionnaire that measures psychological well-being through five simple, non-invasive questions.
Uncertainty and sadness
The results indicated that over 30 per cent of the mothers were exhibiting high levels of distress, and over 30 per cent were experiencing severe levels. Most said they felt helpless and had considered seeking help from a psychologist.
Among the issues contributing to their stress were uncertainty about the future, worries about family or friends in Ukraine or elsewhere, and sadness because of the war. High levels of distress were also related to practical concerns, including money, housing, jobs, language issues, access to healthcare and childcare.
Helping to heal
UNICEF has used the survey results to inform a nationwide online campaign in Poland targeting Ukrainian mothers with information on available psychological support, as well as coping strategies.
“Mental health and psychological support is vital to help families and children heal from the invisible wounds of war and that’s why it’s a huge part of our response and cuts across all of the work we do here in Poland,” said Dr. Sarwar.
Aid delivery in Ukraine
Meanwhile, humanitarians in Ukraine continue to assist frontline communities in the Kharkiv region in the east and the Kherson region in the south, where frequent bombardments are ongoing.
On Wednesday, an inter-agency convoy led by UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country, Denise Brown, delivered aid to a community in the very east of the Kharkiv region, where more than 80 per cent of homes are damaged. Shelling also continues to interrupt water, gas, and electricity supply.
The convoy delivered shelter materials, hygiene supplies and solar lamps to some 1,000 remaining residents in a community that had 5,000 inhabitants in February 2022, said Stephanie Tremblay, a UN Spokesperson in New York, speaking on Friday.
“Today, another inter-agency convoy delivered critical aid – including shelter materials, food and water, solar lamps, hygiene kits and clothing – to support nearly 3,000 residents of another front-line community in the Kherson region,” she said. “Almost half of the remaining residents there are older people with limited access to most basic services.”
Landmine challenges
Humanitarians also warned that Ukraine is now one of the most mine-contaminated countries in the world, with Kharkiv and Kherson the most impacted regions.
Ms. Tremblay said nearly 300,000 hectares of agricultural land in Kharkiv alone needs demining, according to local authorities.
“Our humanitarian colleagues note that mine risks create additional challenges for repairing damaged houses and critical infrastructure and resuming farming, and both regions had large agriculture industries before the full-scale war,” she added.
Grain export update
Ms. Tremblay also provided an update on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, where operations are partially restarting.
Earlier this week, Russia confirmed that it will continue to take part in the UN-brokered agreement for a further 60 days.
The July 2022 deal allows for grain and other related foodstuffs to be shipped to global markets via three Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. It is facilitated by the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), which is based in Istanbul and staffed by representatives from Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye and the UN.
On Friday, the JCC registered six new vessels to participate, out of 15 applications. Three loaded vessels are currently preparing for inspection in Istanbul.
“No ships are currently though loading at any of the three Ukrainian ports under the terms of the Initiative. Teams from the Joint Coordination Centre checked and cleared today three new vessels to proceed to the ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk,” Ms. Tremblay told journalists.
She said the UN “continues to call for the prompt return to a tempo of operations that makes full use of the capacities of the three ports and the Joint Coordination Centre teams.”
In addition to a revised request from the UN aid coordination office OCHA for $2.56 billion to fund its Humanitarian Response Plan – targeting some 18 million people in Sudan – the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that it required $472 million to assist those forced to flee across the country’s borders.
The revised joint humanitarian response plan updates the response strategy launched for Sudan in December 2022 and reflects the “fundamental and widespread needs” within the country, according to OCHA.
Kickstarting aid
“Today 25 million people, more than half the population of Sudan, need humanitarian aid and protection,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, Head and Representative of OCHA in Geneva.
“This is the highest number we have ever seen in the country (and) the response plan we are launching today reflects that new reality; the funding requirement of nearly $2.6 billion is also the highest for any humanitarian appeal for Sudan.”
The fighting that started on 15 April between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has caused tremendous human suffering and death, exacerbating significant pre-existing humanitarian needs in Sudan.
Regional threat
There is also every sign that the crisis could evolve into a regional emergency, OCHA’s Mr. Rajasingham warned, before listing a number of urgent needs, including protection from fighting, medical support, food and water, sanitation, shelter and trauma care.
Since fighting began, nearly a million people have been displaced, the number of those internally displaced has risen to 730,000 and 220,000 have fled to neighboring countries.
“We are also receiving worrying reports of increased sexual violence while the victims have little access to help. Children are especially vulnerable in this chaos that is unfolding,” OCHA also reported.
Also in Geneva for the revised funding appeal, UNHCR’s Raouf Mazou, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, said that the conflict had caused “massive outflows” into neighboring countries, including Chad, where around 60,000 people have now crossed the border in search of safety.
To date, 220,000 refugees and returnees have fled to Chad, Sudan, Egypt, Central African Republic and Ethiopia, the UNHCR official said, adding that 150,000 of them were Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers.
Displaced South Sudanese form the largest number of non-Sudanese people in need. “Overall, we have to keep in mind that there were 1.1 million refugees living in Sudan prior to this crisis,” Mr. Mazou said, before noting that the UN agency’s appeal for $472 million would provide assistance to more than one million people for six months.
Famine fears
A few months ago, humanitarian needs were almost half today’s requirement, said OCHA’s Mr. Rajasingham.
But needs throughout the country have “expanded drastically” since the conflict erupted, leaving an increasing number of people dangerously hungry. “When you have a crisis like this and you don’t have access to basic services, you don’t have access to health and water, there’s an enormous risk that there will be an increased risk of famine as well,” he said.
For Malawians, Cyclone Freddy was an unmitigated disaster. In March this year, the storm ripped through the African country twice during its record-breaking month-long destructive rampage through southern Africa.
The unprecedented duration of the extreme weather event would have been difficult for any country to deal with, but for Malawi, one of the most vulnerable developing nations in the world, it was devastating. Hundreds were killed, more than half a million people were displaced, and thousands of hectares of crops were washed away.
As of early April, hundreds of people remained missing, and some 1.1 million people were in need of humanitarian support. The severe storm hit during Malawi’s worst cholera outbreak in two decades, adding to the pressures on a health system that was already severely stretched.
That same month, a group of independent UN rights experts called for more humanitarian aid, but also for Malawi to “develop durable solutions to avert, minimize, and address disaster displacement through climate adaptation measures, preparedness and disaster risk reduction.”
A woman is tested for COVID-19 in Shenzhen, China.
More severe, costly, and deadly disasters
The impact of Freddy is just one example of the growing number of complex and costly disasters affecting increasing numbers of people, that prompted 187 countries to sign up to an international disaster risk reduction agreement in 2015.
The Sendai Framework, named after the Japanese city in which it was adopted, is an international UN agreement designed to reduce disaster losses. It targets substantially fewer deaths from disasters, a reduction in the disaster damage to infrastructure, and improved early warning systems – all by 2030.
However, eight years on, little progress has been made: according to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), there has been an 80 per cent increase in the number of people affected by disasters since 2015. What’s more, UNDRR finds that many of the lessons from past disasters seem to have been ignored.
An eight-year-old girl stands near a school destroyed by floods in Quetta, Pakistan.
Half-time report
From 18 to 19 May, a High-Level meeting at UN Headquarters in New York will provide an opportunity to lay out the many challenges that have stalled progress, and chart a course towards a safer world.
Delegates at the event will have pored over the report of the Midterm Review of the Framework’s implementation, which lays bare the scale of the problem. Released in April to mark the half-way point between the launch of the Framework and the 2030 deadline, it does not make for comfortable reading.
The report emphasizes the growing impacts of climate change since 2015, and the brutally unequal consequences, which are much more severe in developing countries; a case in point is the flooding in Pakistan in 2022, which affected more than 33 million people and damaged millions of acres of agricultural land, causing widespread food insecurity.
The growing interconnectedness of the world’s societies, environments, and technologies means that disasters can spread extremely quickly. The report points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a prime example, beginning as a local outbreak in China in 2019, before rapidly spreading around the world, leading to the death of some 6.5 million people by the end of 2022.
“One doesn’t have to look hard to find examples of how disasters are becoming worse’” says Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of UNDRR. “The sad fact is that many of these disasters are preventable because they are caused by human decisions. The call to action of the Midterm Review is that countries need to reduce risk in every decision, action, and investment they make.
Countries taking the lead
Clearly, not enough is being done: the costs of disasters continue to rise, but funding for disaster risk reduction is not going up at anywhere near the rate needed to tackle them.
Nevertheless, as the report shows, there are many examples of countries, at a national level, putting plans in place to protect their citizens from the risk of disasters.
To date, disaster preparedness plans have been enacted in 125 countries. They range from legislation in Costa Rica that allows all institutions to allocate budgets for prevention and emergency response, to Australia’s Disaster Ready Fund, which will invest up to A$200 million per year from 2023 – 2024 in disaster prevention and resilience initiatives, and Barbados’s disaster clauses that allow for debt to be immediately frozen in the event of an economic impact caused by disaster.
And, whilst the number of people affected by disasters is going up, the proportion being killed has more than halved. The disaster-related mortality rate in the decade 2005-2014 was 1.77 per 100,000 global population, and in the decade 2012-2021 it had dropped to 0.84 (barring the impact of COVID-19).
The recommendations in the Mid-Term Report, and the measures being taken at a national level will form the basis of the discussions at the High-Level Meeting: they contain proof that a safer world is achievable, between now and 2030, if the necessary investments in risk reduction are made.
Reducing the risk of disasters at the UN
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) helps decision makers across the globe better understand and change their attitude to risk.
UNDRR’s authoritative expertise and presence in five regional offices is used to build and nurture relationships with national and local governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society and the private sector.
The Office collects, collates, and shares the latest high quality technical information and data about reducing risk and building resilience more effectively. Hundreds of experts work in UNDRR’s science and tech advisory groups, essential partners for governments and other stakeholders all over the world.
The development and roll-out of inclusive and accessible multi-hazard early warning systems is a key part of their work. Such systems save lives: on average, when disaster strikes, fatality rates in countries without them are eight times higher than in countries that have put them in place.
“In this community, many children don’t go to school or pre-school, because they don’t have food. Many others can’t afford the school fees. I can’t afford to send my own children to pre-school because my husband lost his job.
Some children suffer from a lack of parental love. We have seen neglected children left to find their own food, and at risk of sexual abuse from adults, who could potentially infect them with HIV.
This also happened to me: although my parents did not neglect me when I was a child, I faced abuse from adults including neighbours, my teachers, and the pastor at my church.
Siphiwe Nxumalo, a World Food Programme (WFP) volunteer in Eswatini, returned to her home country to help orphans and vulnerable children, struggling with poverty and neglect.
A safe place for kids
Before we created this Neighbourhood Care Point, this building was full of criminals. It was used for storing stolen goods, and the walls were covered in violent graffiti images.
We have created a safe space for kids. After we renovated the structure and opened the Care Point, crime in the area dropped. We are not professional teachers, but make use of online resources, such as classes on YouTube, and educational apps.
We want them to develop an entrepreneurial mindset from a very young age, showing them how to avoid widespread crime and create opportunities for themselves.
Hot meals, five days a week
Around 75 children come to this Care Point. These centres originally targeted children under the age of eight, but we welcome kids of all ages, including those whose parents cannot afford to send them to school, children with disabilities, children in urgent need of food.
With support from WFP, we are able to provide hot meals, five days a week. Every month, we are supplied with maize, beans, rice and oil. WFP also gave us farming tools, and we have created a vegetable garden, where we grow beans, spinach, lettuce, and other vegetables.
I hadn’t realized, until my friends pointed it out, that I always talk about kids, and how to help them. So, I am in the right place. I have found my calling.
Children at a WFP-supported Neighbourhood Care Point in Eswatini
Eswatini: an HIV hotspot
Eswatini has the highest HIV prevalence in the world: 27.9 per cent of the adult population lives with the virus; 71 per cent of children are orphaned or vulnerable; and one in four children have lost one or both parents due to HIV/ AIDS.
Orphans and vulnerable children are at increased risk of facing violence and abuse, HIV infection, malnutrition, and reduced access to education.
Neighbourhood Care Points can be found across the entire country. In 2023, WFP supports 800 of these care points with regular food deliveries and farming inputs.
Local volunteers ensure that children have access to much needed education and health care, recreational activities, and healthy meals.
“Health facilities and hospitals should be safe havens in times of crisis,” the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Saturday, condemning an attack on a hospital in Khartoum.
Laila Baker, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) regional director, said pregnant women in capital city are facing perilous conditions.
“We are acutely concerned,” she said. “There is no way we can monitor them, there is no access to safe delivery services, no way to ensure even meagre communication.
In addition, women can go into premature delivery, and complications can arise from panic, she said, adding that “the circumstances are so tenuous.”
Epicentre of violence
Two weeks of brutal fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have turned Khartoum, the epicentre of the violence, into a warzone and thrown the country into turmoil.
More than 500 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes, either within the country or across borders to neighbouring Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.
Many of those fleeing have already been displaced multiple times due to political instability, hunger and climate crises, with untold numbers taking refuge in unsafe, crowded and unsanitary makeshift camps.
Health sector collapsing
Only one in four health facilities in Khartoum are fully operational, with most damaged only partially functioning, leaving millions of people without access to critical care, UNFPA said.
Dozens of attacks on hospitals, healthcare staff and ambulances, alongside widespread looting of already scarce medical supplies, water, fuel and electricity, are pushing the health sector to the brink of collapse.
Severe supply shortages
“We have a severe lack of supplies in Khartoum, especially oxytocin and umbilical clips,” said Jamila, a midwife working in a UNFPA-supported health centre in Khartoum. “Although services continue for the time being, we are praying for more supplies to arrive soon.”
Blood, oxygen, and other medical necessities, such as fuel for ambulances, are also running dangerously low.
Despite the catastrophic circumstances, those hospitals and health centres still functioning – and standing – are proving to be a lifeline for pregnant women and new mothers.
Where access is jeopardized, community midwives and skilled birth attendants trained by UNFPA are supporting pregnant women to give birth in the safety of their homes.
Midwives play key role
For women and girls, including the estimated 219,000 who are currently pregnant in Khartoum alone, not receiving essential health services could prove life threatening.
Access to midwives is the single most important factor in stopping preventable maternal and newborn deaths.
Some 24,000 women are expected to give birth in the coming weeks, in the throes of chaos and bloodshed, making it extremely hazardous for them to seek essential antenatal care, safe delivery services, or postnatal support.
Refugees fleeing the conflict in Sudan seek shelter under a tree in the village of Koufroun, in neighbouring Chad.
Fighting threatens safe deliveries
Incessant fighting in the Jabal Awliya village in Khartoum State has severely affected reproductive health care.
“We have designated phone numbers to receive requests for home births, and a midwife goes to perform the delivery,” said Saadya, a midwife working in Jabal Awliya. “We are able to accept all requests for now.”
With continued strikes on infrastructure, there is a risk of electricity lines being cut and even these emergency hotlines being severed for people in dire need.
Some 90 UNFPA-trained community midwives are currently assisting pregnant women and girls to give birth safely, mainly at home, in the Kalakla, Jabal, Naser and Al Azhari areas of Khartoum.
Over the past two years, UNFPA has trained 460 midwives who are reaching even remote communities, including in humanitarian crises, building trust and delivering high-quality maternal health services.
Surge in gender-based violence
There are also alarming reports of surging forms of gender-based violence – sexual violence against women and girls fleeing the fighting, domestic abuse fuelled by movement restrictions and tension, and women and girls being targeted when they go out to get supplies.
In response to the rising risks for some 3.1 million women and girls who were already at risk of violence before the current crisis, efforts are underway to train service providers to provide remote psychosocial support.
Prior to the current crisis, UNFPA distributed supplies for more than 19,000 safe births and supplies to meet the reproductive health needs of more than 45,000 people, including for the clinical management of rape and treating sexually transmitted infections.
UNFPA partners are currently making sure these reach those health facilities and hospitals that are still functioning across Sudan.
Heading to a breaking point
Sudan was already one of the world’s most impoverished countries before the conflict broke out, with one third of the population in need of humanitarian assistance and facing acute hunger.
The recent violence and attacks on health centres are a violation of international law and the right to health, the agency said.
As the situation reaches breaking point, and despite mounting risks, UNFPA said it will continue to assist safe births, seek protection for vulnerable women and girls, and support midwives to save lives.
Secretary-General António Guterres was speaking to reporters in Doha, Qatar, after convening an international meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan.
He said they had agreed on the need for a “strategy of engagement” with the Taliban, to help the country’s most vulnerable people.
No question of Taliban recognition
Mr. Guterres made clear that the gathering had not focussed on recognition of the de facto authorities, but rather on developing a common, international approach to burning interlinked issues, such as terrorism, the crackdown on human rights, and the spread of drug trafficking.
“To achieve our objectives, we cannot disengage”, he said. “Many called for engagement to be more effective and based on lessons which we have learned from the past. The UN will continue to use its convening power to advance a forward-leaning approach, which puts the Afghan people first, and in a manner that is complementary to existing regional platforms and initiatives.”
The UN chief said the current ban introduced last month by Taliban leaders on Afghan women working for the UN – following on from a ban on them working for national and international NGOs “is unacceptable and puts lives in jeopardy.
“Let me be crystal clear: we will never be silent in the face of unprecedented, systemic attacks on women and girls’ rights. We will always speak out when millions of women and girls are being silenced and erased from sight.”
Collective interest
He said the envoys, which included UN Special Envoy, Roza Otunbayeva, had agreed it was important to “understand each other’s concerns and limitations, but agreed that it was in everyone’s interest, foremost the Afghans, to work together.”
They reached agreement on “the need for a strategy of engagement that allows for the stabilization of Afghanistan but also allows for addressing important concerns.”
While different countries placed different priorities on human rights, terrorism, or drug trafficking, “there is a general recognition that they are intertwined”, and needed to viewed as a whole.
Secretary-General António Guterres briefs journalists in Doha, Qatar, on the situation in Afghanistan.
World’s biggest humanitarian crisis
He concluded speaking in his own capacity as Secretary-General, stating it was “difficult to overestimate the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan. It is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today.”
A staggering 97 per cent live in poverty, while 28 million Afghans, need some form of humanitarian assistance.
Funding is not forthcoming, with the Humanitarian Response Plan, seeking $4.6 billion, having received “a mere $294 million” so far.
The vast majority of the UN personnel delivering lifesaving aid, are Afghan nationals, he stressed and banning women workers “deliberately undermines the development of a country that desperately needs the contributions of all, in order to achieve sustainable peace and contribute to regional stability.”
Stay and deliver
He pledged the UN would never waver in its commitment to support the Afghan people, and the Organization is determined to keep on delivering to preserve the fragile lifeline
Throughout the past decades, we stayed, and we delivered. And we are determined to seek the necessary conditions to keep delivering.
Asked if there were any circumstances when he would meet Taliban leaders, Mr. Guterres said that while today was not the right moment, he would “obviously not refuse that possibility”.
He said he was personally invested in convening a follow up meeting of envoys at a future date.
“The scale and speed of what is unfolding is unprecedented in Sudan. We are extremely concerned by the immediate as well as long-term impact on all people in Sudan, and the broader region,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement.
The UN again urged the warring sides to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, allow safe passage for civilians fleeing hostilities, and respect humanitarian workers and assets.
Nearing the ‘breaking point’
The humanitarian situation in Sudan “is reaching breaking point,” Mr. Griffiths warned in a separate statement, underscoring the need to stop the fighting.
Essential goods are becoming scarce, especially in the capital, Khartoum, and families are struggling to access water, food, fuel and other critical supplies.
Furthermore, vulnerable people are unable to leave areas worst-hit areas as transportation costs have risen exponentially, while those injured in the violence find it difficult to access urgent healthcare.
Aid stocks dwindling
“The United Nations and our partners are doing our best to reboot the humanitarian response in the country,” he said.
“Massive looting of the offices and warehouses of humanitarian organizations has depleted most of our supplies. We are exploring urgent ways to bring in and distribute additional supplies.”
The UN “relief chief” said a shipment with five containers of intravenous fluids and other emergency supplies is currently docked in the city of Port Sudan, located on the Red Sea coast, awaiting clearance by the authorities.
Appeal for renewed ceasefire
The announcement of his deployment came just hours after the UN and international partners appealed for Generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, to agree to extend a 72-hour ceasefire for another three days, amid reports of ongoing airstrikes in Khartoum.
The Trilateral Mechanism – which brings together the African Union, East African bloc IGAD and the UN – also called on the rivals to ensure their forces fully implement the truce.
“As the people of Sudan urgently need a humanitarian pause, the Trilateral Mechanism urges the parties to the conflict to respect the ceasefire, to protect civilians and to refrain from attacks on civilian populated areas, schools, and healthcare facilities,” they said in a statement.
“This ceasefire would also pave the way for talks between both sides towards the establishment of a permanent cessation of hostilities,” they added.
Death and displacement
Sudan has been undergoing a turbulent transition to civilian rule in the wake of the April 2019 overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir. A power-sharing government that brought together military and civilian leaders was also toppled in a coup in October 2021.
The Trilateral Mechanism has been facilitating talks since May 2022 which resulted in an agreement towards restoring civilian rule, signed that December.
However, hopes shattered two weeks ago when fighting erupted between the regular Sudanese army, led by General al-Burhan, and paramilitary forces under General Dagalo, known as the RSF.
Hundreds of people have been killed, and thousands have been fleeing, including to neighbouring Chad, where some 20,000 Sudanese have found refuge. Others are sheltering in the Central African Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya and South Sudan, often among already vulnerable communities.
The fighting has also forced the UN to essentially halt all aid operations in a country where nearly 16 million people, roughly one third of the population, already were in need.
Commitment to stay
The UN relocated and evacuated staff from Khartoum and other locations over the past week, who will continue to work remotely, whether from inside Sudan or in other countries.
The UN and partners are establishing a core team in Port Sudan, which will be responsible for overseeing aid operations and negotiating humanitarian access with de facto authorities.
Humanitarians now based in the coastal city, capital of Red Sea state, are determined to quickly return to Khartoum, as the UN continues to uphold its commitment to Sudan.
Earlier on Sunday, Volker Perthes, head of the UN Mission supporting the transition, UNITAMS, was briefed by the Wali (Governor) and other officials in Red Sea State on the humanitarian and security situation there.
“He assured them that the UN is not leaving Sudan and that he will work from Port Sudan until the security situation in Khartoum allows our return,” UNITAMS said in a tweet.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that tens of thousands of refugees from South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea living in the country have fled the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the Khartoum area.
The newly displaced have found shelter in existing refugee camps further east and south, creating new humanitarian challenges.
UNHCR is also particularly concerned about the situation in the Darfur region, where fears are deepening of a revival of ethnic tensions.
Darfur alert
The agency’s representative in Sudan, Axel Bisschop, told reporters in Geneva that Darfur might present the “biggest challenge” from a humanitarian point of view. “We’re concerned that the intercommunal violence is going to increase and that we might have some situations which will repeat in relation to what we had a couple of years ago,” in a region which has already experienced severe conflict and displacement, he said.
UNHCR stressed that Darfur presents “a myriad of pressing protection issues”, highlighting that a number of sites hosting internally displaced people have been burned to the ground, while civilian houses and humanitarian premises have been hit by bullets.
Concerns over the region are shared by the UN rights office (OHCHR), which warned on Friday of a “serious risk” of violence escalating in West Darfur as the hostilities between the RSF and SAF have triggered intercommunal violence.
OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said that in El Geneina, West Darfur, “deadly ethnic clashes” have been reported and an estimated 96 people have been killed since 24 April.
Guterres ‘deeply grateful’ to governments aiding UN evacuation
The UN Secretary-General expressed his gratitude to France and other nations who have helped with the relocation and evacuation of UN staff from Khartoum and elsewhere this week.
In a statement issued by his Spokesperson, António Guterres highlighted help from France in safely transporting more than 400 UN personnel and dependents out of Sudan.
“The French Navy transported more than 350 of our colleagues and their families from Port Sudan to Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday night.”
On Thursday, more than 70 UN and affiliated personnel, as well as others, were flown on a French Air Force plane from El Fasher, Sudan, to the capital of Chad.
“We also thank the authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Chad, Kenya and Uganda for facilitating the arrival of our colleagues and their families.
The Secretary-General is also very thankful to the many other Member States, including the United States, Jordan, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada, who have assisted in ensuring the safe transport of UN personnel.”
Rights abuses rise
The overall death toll in the conflict has risen to at least 512, according to the latest figures from the Sudanese Ministry of Health quoted by OHCHR on Friday, with the understanding that this is almost certainly a very conservative estimate.
While the fragile ceasefire has led to a decrease in fighting in some areas, allowing some to flee their homes in search of safety, human rights abuses against people on the move – such as extortion – have been rife, Ms. Shamdasani said.
A UNHCR emergency transit centre in Renk in South Sudan is receiving displaced people from Sudan.
Growing displacement
Mr. Bisschop said that Sudan hosts over a million refugees, notably from South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
UNHCR has received reports of around 33,000 refugees having fled from Khartoum to refugee camps in White Nile State, 2,000 to the camps in Gedaref and 5,000 to Kassala since the start of the crisis two weeks ago.
Thousands of people – Sudanese citizens, including many internally displaced people, and refugees living in Sudan – have also fled the country.
UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh said that in Chad, UNHCR together with the Government has registered around 5,000 arrivals so far, and that at least 20,000 have crossed.
Some 10,000 people have crossed to South Sudan, while in Egypt, Central African Republic and Ethiopia, there have been an unknown number of arrivals, given the speed at which the situation is unfolding and the scale of the country.
Dispalced people who arrive at the UNHCR transit centre in Renk, South Sudan, receive relief items.
Lifesaving assistance on pause
UNHCR said the security situation has forced it to “temporarily pause” most of its aid operations in Khartoum, the Darfurs and North Kordofan, where it has become “too dangerous to operate”.
“The suspension of some humanitarian programmes is likely to exacerbate protection risks faced by those who rely on humanitarian assistance to survive,” UNHCR warned.
Mr. Bisschop said that UNHCR was working closely with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), to see how the food that is already positioned in the country can be provided.
Brenda Kariuki, WFP’s Regional Communications Officer for East Africa, said that amid the crisis, millions more across the region could be plunged into hunger. In Sudan, security threats to humanitarian operations, as well as the looting of WFP supplies from warehouses and the theft of vehicles used to transport aid, were depriving the most vulnerable of desperately needed assistance, the UN agency said.
Around one-third of the country’s population, or some 15.8 million people, were already in need of aid before the fighting started. The UN’s 2023 Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan, for a total of $1.7 billion, remains only 13.5 per cent funded.
Fleeing into CAR
Briefing correspondents in New York, Deputy UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, said that humanitarians were reporting some 3,000 people have crossed the Sudanese border into northern Central African Republic, CAR, setting up makeshift settlements.
“Local authorities are exploring the possibility of relocating them in Birao, far from the border region”, and more arrivals are expected.
With Sudan a major supplier of essential goods to CAR, especially during the rainy season, which runs from now through October, prices are ticking up and some items such as sugar and millet have doubled in price in CAR since the fighting began.
Some 120,000 people were already in need of humanitarian assistance in the northern part of the country, highlighting the damaging impact of the fighting spilling across Sudan’s borders.
Healthcare in jeopardy
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday that in Khartoum, more than 60 per cent of health facilities are closed and only 16 per cent are operating as normal.
WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told media in Geneva on Friday that WHO has verified 25 attacks on healthcare since the start of the fighting, which killed eight people and injured 18.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) previously warned that the ongoing violence has disrupted “critical, life-saving care” for some 50,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
IOM
Evacuees from Sudan are assisted by Chadian authorities and IOM staff on their arrival in N’Djamena, the country’s capital.
Evacuees arrive in Chadian capital from Sudan
The first group of evacuees from Sudan to be assisted by the UN migration agency IOM, arrived at N’Djamena’s Hassan Djamous International Airport in Chad late on Thursday, in two special flights chartered by the Chadian authorities.
The group included 116 males and 110 females, 39 of whom were children.
IOM helped the Chadian authorities with the registration of the new arrivals, the identification and referral of vulnerable cases, and post-arrival assistance including cash to support onwards transportation to reunite evacuees with their families.
“We are working around the clock to continue supporting the Government of Chad in this delicate and complex situation, despite massive gaps in much needed funding,” says Anne Kathrin Schaefer, IOM Chief of Mission in Chad.
These efforts are closely coordinated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chadians Abroad and International Cooperation which heads a Government Crisis Cell, established to coordinate the evacuation operations from Sudan.
“Our priority is to ensure that all those who have arrived receive adequate support to help them reunite with their families, but also medical assistance, including mental health and psychosocial support,” she added.
“I am horrified by the toll the clashes are having on civilians”, said Abdou Dieng. “At least 331 people have been killed nationwide, including five aid workers, and nearly 3,200 have been injured.”
The fighting between troops from the national army and a powerful rival militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted six days ago, and has had a devastating impact on civilian life and the major on-going humanitarian aid operation across Sudan.
Latest news reports indicate that bombing, shelling and gunfire have continued unabated, especially in the capital Khartoum, and the UN migration agency, IOM, reported on Friday that one of its staff members had become a victim of the violence.
UN migration agency staffer killed
“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the death of a dedicated IOM Sudan staff member this morning after the vehicle he was traveling in with his family south of El Obeid was caught in a crossfire between two warring parties”, said Director General, António Vitorino.
He said the male staffer leaves behind a wife and newborn child, “and our team in Sudan in mourning.”
“The safety and security of all IOM staff is my number one priority. We continue to work with our UN partners to update our security response”, he assured.
Three workers from the World Food Programme (WFP) lost their lives in North Darfur as the military showdown first began on Saturday.
Mr. Vitorino said the latest outbreak of violence has forced IOM to suspend its humanitarian operations in Sudan.
IOM has operated in Sudan since 2000, responding to the complex humanitarian needs in the country where an estimated 3.7 million people are internally displaced”, the IOM chief continued.
Some 15.8 million people in Sudan, one-third of the population, were in need of humanitarian assistance before this week’s fighting began.
Sudan: Humanitarian situation – Press Conference (20 April 2023)
Food, water, healthcare crisis
Mr. Dieng said that even short agreed pauses in the intense fighting between the rival factions, which have so far ignored all calls for a ceasefire, would allow civilians access to essential food and water.
“Access to health facilities is also paramount. Many hospitals have had to close. And in those that are functioning, widespread blackouts and lack of electricity place patients at high risk.”
Several hospitals have simply run out of blood and other lifesaving supplies.
“Assaults on hospitals, humanitarian staff and facilities must stop”, said the Humanitarian Coordinator.
“As we are ending the holy month of Ramadan and celebrate Eid al-Fitr, a time of peace and reconciliation, I call on all parties to the conflict to immediately end the fighting and work towards a peaceful resolution.”
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres made an urgent call for a three-day ceasefire over Eid, as the “first step” towards a permanent cessation of hostilities, noting that humanitarian operations had become “virtually impossible”.
The UN alone has a 4,000-strong team of humanitarian workers, 3,200 of whom are Sudanese nationals.
According to the latest statement from UN aid coordination office OCHA, there have been reports of military strikes against health facilities, hijacking of ambulances with patients and paramedics still on board, looting of health facilities, and military forces occupying health facilities.
Severe shortages grow
In hospitals, there are severe shortages of specialized medical staff, oxygen supplies and blood bags, according to the World Health Organization, WHO, while lack of electricity and blackouts place hospital patients at high risk.
“There are also rapidly rising mental health and psychosocial support needs, especially among children, as the conflict continues”, noted OCHA.
As of Friday morning, heavy gunfire, air strikes and shelling have been reported in different parts of the country, OCHA added, especially in North, Central and South Darfur states, North Kordofan and in the capital, Khartoum.
On 20 April, there were unverified reports of intensified clashes in El Obeid, North Kordofan State, as well as unrest and rising tensions in Gedaref, in eastern Sudan.
“As in all crises, this will surely have dire and disproportionate impacts on the lives of Sudanese women and girls. We stand in solidarity with the people of Sudan and remain committed to supporting them.
“The resilience of Sudanese women is a source of hope, their role in the pursuit of peace essential, their strength as humanitarian workers, carers and protectors an inspiration”, added Ms. Bahous.
“We must heed their calls for a ceasefire and peace and commit to supporting them in everything they do.”
She noted that reports of sexual and gender-based violence were already surfacing, and feared “they will only grow more frequent.”
She called on Government troops and militia to “ensure that no woman or girl is affected by these crimes”.
She insisted that “every instance” of sexual and gender-based violence must be investigated and prosecuted without exception.
“The UN Secretary-General has called for an immediate halt to the fighting to coincide with Eid-Al-Fitr. This will allow the continued delivery of essential humanitarian assistance and a return to dialogue. He has demanded respect for international law. I join his call and urge all parties to commit to a peaceful resolution.”
