This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
UN appeals for $35 billion to help world’s ‘most vulnerable and fragile’
A record 235 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection next year, a near- 40 per cent increase on 2020 which is “almost entirely from COVID-19”, the UN’s emergency relief chief said on Tuesday.
Mark Lowcock said that the global health crisis had impacted dramatically on people already reeling from conflict, record levels of displacement and climate change shocks. He said that “multiple” famines were also looming and that the UN and partners were “overwhelmed”.
“The picture we are presenting is the bleakest and darkest perspective on humanitarian needs in the period ahead that we have ever set out. That is a reflection of the fact that the COVID pandemic has wreaked carnage across the whole of the most fragile and vulnerable countries on the planet.”
This year’s Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) sets out plans to reach 160 million of the most vulnerable people in 56 countries.
Aid funding will be used next year to “stave off famine, fight poverty, and keep children vaccinated and in school”, Mr. Lowcock explained, and cash will also be used from the UN’s Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) to tackle rising violence against women and girls linked to the pandemic.
1.3 billion children have no internet access at home
Two in three school-age children – 1.3 billion in all – do not have internet access at home, and it’s preventing them from learning vital skills they need to thrive, the UN said on Tuesday.
The findings, uncovered in a joint report by UN Children’s Fund UNICEF and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), also highlighted a similar lack of access for 15 to 24 year-olds, with more than six in 10 of them lacking web access.
The massive number “is more than a digital gap – it is a digital canyon”, said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.
She said that this lack of connectivity doesn’t just limit children and young people’s ability to connect online, it isolates them from work and prevents them from competing in the modern economy.
Ms. Fore noted that school closures linked to the coronavirus crisis had made things worse for millions and were effectively “costing the next generation their futures”.
Globally, 58 per cent of school-age children from wealthiest households have an internet connection at home, compared with only 16 per cent from the poorest, the UN report found.
UNHCR appeals to Ethiopia to let it reach hungry Eritrean refugees
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has appealed to Ethiopia for access to thousands of refugees whose supplies have been cut by the month-long conflict in the north of the country, saying its concerns are growing “by the hour”.
Spokesperson Babar Baloch told journalists in Geneva that urgent access was needed to reach around 96,000 Eritrean nationals sheltering in Tigray region, as they will have run out of food.
The UN agency also cited unconfirmed reports of attacks, abductions and forced recruitment at the refugee camps housing the Eritreans – although it said that “difficulties” in communications and security meant that it was not possible to verify conditions in the settlements.
The plea for access follows the launch of a $147 million appeal by UNHCR to meet the needs of more than 40,000 Ethiopians who fled fighting in Tigray and sought shelter in neighbouring Sudan. By April, numbers are expected to reach 100,000.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
