Sixth Asia-Pacific Forum & other topics - Daily Press Briefing (27 March 2019)

Noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.
Daily Press Briefing:
- Deputy Secretary-General Travels
- Cyclone Idai
- Syria
- Security Council
- Yemen
- Press Briefing Tomorrow
- Peacekeeping
DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL’S TRAVELS
The Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, is in Bangkok, today, where she spoke at the opening of the Sixth Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development.
In her keynote address, she said that the governments in the region have taken on the challenge of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with decisive leadership.
But the Deputy Secretary-General cautioned that rising inequalities in the Asia-Pacific region have become a major obstacle to accelerating progress.
The annual Forum brings together senior government officials, the UN, the private sector and civil society.
The Deputy Secretary-General will be returning to New York on Friday.

CYCLONE IDAI
And I want to just update you on the UN’s efforts to respond to Cyclone Idai.
The first of three planes carrying relief items from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) landed early this morning in the Mozambican capital, Maputo.
The supplies – including tents, sleeping mats, mosquito nets, and solar lanterns – will be distributed to 30,000 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
UNHCR’s emergency teams are being deployed to all three countries to support the response.
For its part, the World Health Organization (WHO) is providing supplies to treat diarrhoeal diseases and cholera, and it is helping to set up three cholera treatment centres.
WHO is also putting together a surge team to send to Mozambique of more than 40 people with expertise in logistics, epidemiology, and outbreak prevention and response.

SYRIA
Back here, Rosemary DiCarlo, the head of the Political and Peacebuilding Department, briefed the Security Council on Syria this morning, saying that, after eight long years, horrendous years of suffering by the Syrian people, the conflict seems far from over.
She said the Secretary-General has watched, with great concern, the situation in Idlib deteriorate in recent weeks amid escalating violence, which has caused civilian casualties and the further displacement of tens of thousands of people. In the northeast, she added, the UN is strongly encouraging international diplomatic efforts to ensure that military escalation is avoided at all costs. Any escalation in the northeast could lead to devastating consequences for civilians and could create conditions conducive to the re-emergence of Da’esh.
And Ramesh Rajasingham from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told Council members that UN assessments indicate that 11.7 million people require humanitarian assistance and protection inside Syria in 2019. More than 5.6 million Syrians live as refugees across the region, and he added that the scale of humanitarian needs in Syria remains staggering by any measure.
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