World Bee Day & other topics - Daily Briefing (20 May 2019)

Noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.
Daily Press Briefing:
- Secretary- General Travel's
- Peacekeepers Day
- Diagne Award
- Mali
- Yemen
- Syria
- Libya
- Somalia
- Afghanistan
- Myanmar
- World Bee Day
SECRETARY-GENERAL’S TRAVELS
Over the weekend, the Secretary-General wrapped up a trip to the Pacific trip and issued a message, in which he praised small islands for their determination to tackle the global climate emergency and their actions to increase their resilience and capacity to adapt. However, he stressed that climate change cannot be stopped by small island countries alone. It needs to be done with the rest of the world.  He said this requires political will to transform the energy, industry, agriculture and mobility sectors, and he reiterated his three messages for world leaders: to tax pollution and not people; to stop subsidizing fossil fuels; and to stop building new coal plants by 2020.
In a tweet, he said after his visit he is now “more convinced than ever that the global climate emergency is the battle of our lives – a battle we can and must win.”
In his last stop in Vanuatu, the Secretary-General met with the President and Prime Minister and praised the country’s response to Cyclone Pam, as well as its ocean policy, which requires the removal of all single-use plastics.

PEACEKEEPERS DAY
International Peacekeepers Day will take place on 29 May, but, in New York, we will honor that Day this Friday.
A message from the Secretary-General has already been issued, in which he says that the Day is intended to honor more than one million men and women who have served as United Nations peacekeepers since our first mission in 1948.
On that day, the Secretary-General says we must remember the more than 3,800 personnel who have paid the ultimate price, and we express our deepest gratitude to the 100,000 civilian, police and military peacekeepers deployed around the world today and to the countries that contribute these brave and dedicated women and men. 

DIAGNE AWARD
The UN peacekeeping department has announced the awarding of the Captain Mbaye Diagne Medal for Exceptional Courage to the late Private Chancy Chitete of Malawi.  He will be given the award as part of International Day of Peacekeeping commemoration on this Friday, which I just mentioned.
Private Chitete was serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and lost his life in “Operation Usalama,” conducted by the UN peacekeepers in November 2018 against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) group, in order to stop attacks on local towns and prevent the disruption of the Ebola response.  Private Chitete’s actions saved the life of a fellow peacekeeper from Tanzania.
We expect the family of Private Chitete to be in New York to receive the award from the Secretary-General.
This is the first time that the award has been conferred ever since it was established in 2014 by the Security Council and awarded in 2016 to the family of the late Captain Diagne, who saved countless lives while serving as a UN peacekeeper in Rwanda. The medal is the highest and most prestigious recognition to be earned in the service of United Nations peacekeeping.
Full Highlights: