REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Michele Zaccheo, Chief, Radio and Television Section, United Nations Information Service, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons for the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

UN Secretary-General

Looking ahead, Mr. Zaccheo said that there would be a number of high-level UN officials at the opening of the Rio Olympics on 5 August, and that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would be in Rio de Janeiro on 4 August, where he would meet with the refugee team and the President of the International Olympic Committee.

South Sudan

Melissa Fleming, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said that the situation had been getting increasingly tense in South Sudan, among reports of fighting erupting in Juba. UNHCR was responding to refugee flows into Uganda in particular, which had doubled in the past ten days, bringing the total in Uganda to 52,000 people who had entered the country since the renewed violence had started three weeks previous. Kenya had reported the arrival of 1,000 refugees in the same period, while 7,000 had fled to Sudan. In total, 60,000 people had fled the country since violence had broken out in Juba in July, bringing the overall number of South Sudanese refugees in neighboring countries since December 2013 to nearly 900,000.

The refugees had brought disturbing reports that armed groups operating on roads to Uganda were preventing people from fleeing South Sudan. New arrivals from Yei had said they had received letters warning them to evacuate the town in anticipation of conflict between rebel and government forces. Refugees had also reported that armed groups operating across different parts of South Sudan were looting villages, murdering civilians and forcibly recruiting young men and boys into their ranks.

More than 85 per cent of the refugees arriving in Uganda were women and children under the age of eighteen. Many children had lost one, or both of their parents. Most were from Eastern Equatoria state, with smaller numbers from the capital Juba and Upper Nile states. Many had taken advantage of the opportunity to flee alongside Ugandan military convoys evacuating Ugandan nationals. Both Kenya and Uganda were reporting rising cases of severe malnutrition, particularly among very young children. Those found to be suffering were being placed on food nourishment programmes to bring them back to health.

UNHCR was also concerned for the refugee population in South Sudan. There were 250,000 refugees from Sudan, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who had once sought refuge in South Sudan and were now struggling as was the local population, in particularly the internally displaced people. Humanitarian organizations were having a hard time reaching people in need because of the violence. UNHCR was appealing to all parties to move back to the peace agreement. More details were available in the briefing note.

In response to questions, Ms. Fleming said that UNHCR thanked the Government of Uganda for keeping its border open and providing the required land. UNHCR was used to quickly mobilizing to put up basic shelter but was extremely stretched and underfunded. No-one crossing the border would go without shelter or would have to starve. UNHCR was very concerned about quickly having the capacity to treat the increasing numbers of malnourished and severely malnourished children coming across, who needed immediate nutritional assistance. In response to another question regarding the armed groups, Ms. Fleming said that some of them had been factions of the Government and other represented various militias. At the beginning, there had been reports that the Government had been reluctant to let people leave the country, and had been hindering them from doing so, but now it seemed to be less of a case. Some people were finding that they couldn’t leave because they did not have the money to pay people off. It was very difficult to leave without cash to be able to pay people at check points.

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that Under-Secretary-General Stephen O’Brien was currently in South Sudan on a three-day mission, visiting some of the affected people. Mr. Laerke was expecting to receive an update on that later today and would send a press release by 3 August. There were now 1.61 million internally displaced people inside South Sudan, and internally displaced people today were tomorrow’s refugees. Some 900,000 people had left since December 2013. An estimated 4.8 million people were food insecure inside the country and the UN did not have access to all of them. It was a very fluid situation with a lot of violence, particularly sexual violence was on the rise, as seen in Juba and elsewhere. It was horrific, and the anecdotal evidence received had bene appalling.

In terms of funding, the humanitarian response plan inside South Sudan was asking for almost USD 1.3 billion, and was currently 40 per cent funded. One of the main purposes of the USG’s visit to South Sudan was to draw attention to the relatively poor funding of the appeal and to the plight of the internally displaced and other people affected by this very serious crisis.

Fadela Chaib, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said that WHO was concerned about the overall health needs of the people of South Sudan, especially the internally displaced people. A total of 586 cholera cases, including 21 deaths, had been reported nationwide from the start of the outbreak until the end of July. The majority of those had been recorded in Juba county, where an average of 35 new admissions were being recorded daily.

In response to questions, Ms. Chaib said that the case fatality rate for the current cholera outbreak was high, due to insufficient access to health care. Cholera had also been reported in IDP camps. It was very important to enhance disease surveillance: detect where the cases were and provide the response. Currently, only the Juba Teaching Hospital had been designated as a cholera treatment centre. At least 100 more beds were needed to support the response at the hospital. Other hospitals needed to be prepared to accommodate the numbers of patients coming with diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases.

Preparations were underway to open a rehabilitation centre at Al Sabah Children’s Hospital. WHO and partners were also trying to increase access to oral rehydration therapy in Juba, by setting up oral rehydration points in high transmission locations. Those were mobile sites helping people with intra-venous rehydration, by providing chlorine tablets and by providing a cholera kit for the health workers. Rapid response teams had been deployed to investigate alerts on new cases in Juba and other locations. WHO had some 100 mostly local staff still operational in South Sudan, while 20 international staff had been relocated to Nairobi where they were helping assess the situation. WHO had conducted an oral cholera vaccination campaign targeting 14,000 people at UNMISS transit IDP sites, and was planning to do more vaccination in the coming weeks.

The challenges of delivering health care services in South Sudan were extremely complex, given the background of chronic conflict. WHO and other health partners were trying to respond as efficiently as possible. Nearly 30 per cent of health facilities were not functional and access to basic health services was severely restricted. WHO had requested a total of USD 17.5 million for 2016, and as of today only USD 4.3 million had been received. There were 67 health partners operating inside South Sudan. WHO and partners were trying to help thousands living in IDP camps but also millions outside the camps deprived of basic life-saving health services.

In response to the wave of hostilities, WHO had delivered essential medicines and supplies, including surgical and intra-venous infusion kits to save the life of injured patients. WHO had also donated anti-malarial, cholera and malaria testing kits as well as reproductive health kits. WHO had also sent a newly-designed kit containing supplies for the medical management of severe acute malnutrition in children, and further supplies were on their way. The kit was designed to provide help to malnourished children. It had appropriate food but also medicines and equipment to take care of children in that situation. It had already been used in other settings such as Ethiopia. WHO estimated that some 600,000 children under five in South Sudan were acutely malnourished. The kit was a key strategy to support stabilization centres to manage severe acute malnutrition and to deliver effective and immediate nutritional health response.

Since June 2016 South Sudan had reported 3,316 cases of malaria in several counties. Malaria was the number one cause of morbidity in the country, accounting for 54 per cent of all causes of morbidity. As of 17 July, some 1,564 suspected cases of measles had also been reported since the beginning of 2016, with at least 17 deaths. The measles outbreak had been confirmed in 12 counties in the country. WHO with support from UNICEF and other partners had vaccinated 13,000 people in IDP camps. A country-wide follow-up measles campaign was planned for November 2016.

In response to a question, Ms. Chaib added that South Sudan had three main causes of death, epidemiologically speaking: malaria, respiratory infections and cholera. There were also many cases of malnourished children and the situation remained very precarious. The hope was that the introduction of the new malnutrition kit would help reduce the risk for those children.

Mediterranean update

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that the Missing Migrants project and IOM’s research team in Berlin had determined over the past weekend that worldwide migrant deaths in 2016 stood at 4,027 through the end of July, which was about a 35 per cent increase over the same time period on 2015. The Mediterranean continued to be the most lethal spot in the world, accounting for about three quarters of the worldwide deaths so far in 2016.

Also, some 120 migrants’ or refugees’ remains which had been found over the course of the past week off the course of Libya had not been from previous shipwrecks in the Mediterranean but from a recent tragedy that had happened close to shore, according to information from Libyan authorities that IOM was collaborating with. IOM was now saying that about 120 people had died in the last ten days or so along the Libyan shore.

Geneva Events and Announcements

The Conference on Disarmament had started with a public plenary today at 10 a.m. the third and last part of its annual session, which would run until 16 September 2016. Its next public plenary would take place on 2 August at 10 a.m.

Mr. Zaccheo said that there had been different proposals for the programme of work of the Conference, but there had been no consensus thus far. Today’s meeting was open to the press and South Africa, China and the Russian Federation were on the list of speakers.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which had opened its ninetieth session today, 2 August at Palais Wilson, would be meeting until 26 August. It would review reports presented by eight States on the measures taken in regards to their implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Starting on 3 August it would review the reports of Greece, the United Kingdom, Paraguay, South Africa, Lebanon, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Mr. Zaccheo informed that the Committee Against Torture, which had opened its fifty-eighth session on 25 July at Palais Wilson, would start on 2 August at 3 p.m. its review of the report of Mongolia in regards to its implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. A second session would be dedicated to the review of the report on 3 August from 3 to 6 p.m. The Committee’s fifty-eighth session would run until 12 August.

Mr. Zaccheo said that the Security Council was holding its debate on “Children and armed conflict” today in New York. He also informed the press of an interview from the UN News Service on 1 August, with the Chief of Communications of UNICEF in Syria, Kieran Dwyer, who had said that 25,000 people, including 12,000 children, had been displaced in the night of 31 July from a neighbourhood in western Aleppo by intense military attacks.

Mr. Zaccheo also said that 3 August would be the last day of the three-day visit of Under-Secretary-General Stephen O’Brien to South Sudan.

On 5 August the Security Council would hold its second straw poll on candidates running for UN Secretary-General.

Mr. Zaccheo read a statement from the UN correspondents’ association in Geneva, known as ACANU, on the passing of veteran journalist Mr. Gordon Martin, a former President of the association, who had passed away the previous week. A memorial service would take place in Geneva this afternoon, 2 August.

The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/unog020816