This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
Belarus: Hundreds arrested each week during demonstrations, warns Bachelet
Hundreds of people continue to be arrested every week during demonstrations in Belarus, where protesters have been “systematically and violently dispersed”, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Friday.
Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed deep concern about “use of force” violations by the security forces.
Ms. Bachelet, who maintained that the situation in Belarus had seen “no improvement” since protesters began contesting the result of Presidential elections in August, said that reportedly around 1,000 people were arrested on 8 November, and 700, on 15 November.
She told Member States that allegations of injuries caused by crowd dispersal measures - and of ill-treatment during arrests - have continued to emerge, and that “at least four” people had died.
“Numerous accounts describe demonstrators and passers-by being randomly chased, kicked and severely beaten with batons during the dispersal of rallies. We also have multiple and credible reports of people beaten by members of the security forces during and after their transport to police stations or detention centres. If confirmed, such incidents would constitute ill-treatment and, in some cases, may amount to torture.”
In reply, Belarus’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Yuri Ambrazevich, said that “most people were continuing with their normal lives” in the country and “the Government was functioning”, as were factories and offices.
UN working at ‘full speed’ to prepare for Tigray humanitarian mission
The UN is doing its utmost to secure aid access to Ethiopia’s Tigray region, it said on Friday, after a deal was struck to reach displaced civilians affected by weeks of fighting between federal and regional forces.
The development comes after an earlier announcement that the Ethiopian Government had authorised “unimpeded, sustained and secure” humanitarian access to reach those in need across areas now under its control in the north-eastern area.
In Geneva, UN Refugee Agency spokesperson Babar Baloch said that more than 47,000 Ethiopian refugee arrivals have reached Sudan so far, with more expected.
But there’s still concern for tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees still inside Tigray.
Here’s World Food Programme spokesperson Tomson Phiri:
“WFP’s priority is to locate some of the 50,000 Eritrean refugees who before the conflict, received food assistance in four camps in Tigray. It is possible…that some may have fled by now in search of safety.”
The impact of the conflict on civilians is also a major worry, amid warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO) that the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region was to be expected, along with “injuries, malnutrition and communicable diseases such as malaria.
Toll spreads across five Nigerian states in latest yellow fever outbreak
A new outbreak of yellow fever in Nigeria has caused “many deaths” across five states, and tackling it is proving difficult because of the COVID crisis and insecurity in the northeast, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
Nigeria has been battling successive outbreaks of the preventable disease since 2017; the latest episode has affected Delta, Enugu, Bauchi, Benue and Ebonyi states.
WHO said that 530 suspected cases have been reported to date, and that 172 people have died, before stressing the value of the “highly effective, affordable and safe” vaccine, which provides lifelong protection from yellow fever.
Protecting communities is particularly challenging as Nigeria is also facing ongoing outbreaks of Lassa fever, measles, monkeypox and cholera – along with the humanitarian crisis in the northeast of the country, linked to violent extremists.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
