This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
WFP reaches Haiti’s capital with truckloads of food: WFP
In Haiti, UN humanitarians said on Monday that they have delivered truckloads of food to highly vulnerable people in the capital, after gang violence prevented access for more than two months.
Jean-Martin Bauer, Country Director in Haiti for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), also said that the UN agency had managed to resume flights into Port-au-Prince international airport.
The security situation remains “exceptionally complex” but it has been possible to reach “the most difficult neighbourhoods” of the Haitian capital, Mr. Bauer said.
According to WFP, over a two-week period in May, 615 metric tonnes of rice, beans, and vegetable oil were distributed to nearly 93,000 people in Cité Soleil – including breastfeeding mothers and children.
The UN agency also said that “vital” medical supplies had landed in Port-au-Prince airport on Thursday. This marks the first UN humanitarian cargo flight to land in the capital since violence linked to the country’s political and economic crisis erupted in March 2024.
Further progress is needed to access the sea ports in Port-au-Prince because without these vital supply routes, “people risk slipping even deeper into hunger”, WFP’s Mr. Bauer insisted.
Gaza: conditions ‘unspeakable’ as one million people flee Rafah: UNRWA
A staggering one million people have now fled Rafah in southern Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday, amid fresh reports of overnight attacks by Israeli forces.
The city of Rafah on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt has been home to well over one million forcibly displaced by nearly eight months of daily bombardment by the Israeli military, in response to Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on 7 October.
In a post on X, the agency said that thousands of families “now shelter in damaged and destroyed facilities in Khan Younis, where UNRWA keeps providing essential services, despite increasing challenges. Conditions are unspeakable.”
All 36 of its shelters in Rafah are now empty, the agency reported.
The development came three days after US President Joe Biden unveiled a ceasefire proposal based on a phased end to the war, reportedly involving the withdrawal of Israeli forces from built-up areas, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, along with a plan for Gaza reconstruction.
Global pandemic treaty to be agreed by mid-2025, says UN health agency
Countries meeting in Geneva at the World Health Assembly have agreed to put their names to a treaty to prepare for and protect people from the next full-blown pandemic, by 2025 at the latest, the UN health agency, WHO, has said.
Welcoming the decision at the weekend, the World Health Organization said that 194 Member States had agreed to “critical amendments” to the existing International Health Regulations, which were designed to manage public health emergencies with minimum disruption to travel and trade.
This is the first step towards a Pandemic Agreement which countries made “concrete commitments” to finish negotiating “within a year”.
Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the development historic.
He said that it reflected an understanding that health threats “do not recognize national borders” and the next pandemic “is a matter of when, not if”.
Tedros also insisted that the development would “help to prevent a repeat of the devastation to health, societies and economies caused by COVID-19”, after agreement on reforms including strengthening vulnerable countries’ access to medicines.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
Source of original article: United Nations (news.un.org). Photo credit: UN. The content of this article does not necessarily reflect the views or opinion of Global Diaspora News (www.globaldiasporanews.com).
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