UN News Centre - Africa

A plane carrying relief items has arrived in Luanda, Angola, to assist over 11,000 people who fled a recent surge violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations refugee agency said today.

Disturbed by the escalation of violence and subsequent suffering of civilians in South Sudan as a result of the recent government offensive, the United Nations today urged the Government and other warring parties to cease hostilities, uphold their responsibility to protect civilians.

The United Nations today welcomed the withdrawal of all Polisario Front elements from the Guerguerat area, between the berm and the border with Mauritania, as confirmed by observers of the UN Mission on Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, on 27-28 April.

Unless urgent action is taken to feed people in north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, more than 20 million people will not find enough food to eat, the heads of the United Nations food agencies today warned.

Concluding a three-day mission to Mali, a senior United Nations relief official has underlined the need to keep the humanitarian needs of its people in the international spotlight.

Speaking at the conclusion of a global meeting on importance of agriculture and agro-industries for sustainable and resilient food systems, the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) today urged for greater partnerships to ensure that global development agenda brings prosperity to all.

The United Nations has appealed for $64.5 million to respond to the urgent needs of 731,000 people over the next six months in the Kasaï region, the latest &#8220humanitarian hotspot&#8221 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The political process in South Sudan is not dead but requires significant resuscitation, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the crisis-torn country told the Security Council today.

The United Nations health agency’s regional office for Africa has announced that Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi will take part in a breakthrough pilot programme to make the world’s first malaria vaccine available in selected areas, beginning in 2018.

Almost 30,000 young Somali children, many of them displaced by a searing drought, are being vaccinated against measles this week in a United Nations-backed emergency campaign in one of the country’s hardest-hit towns.

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Central Africa was relieved to learn that Cameroon President Paul Biya instructed that full internet services be restored in the North-West and South-West Regions of Cameroon.

As the drought intensifies in south and north-eastern Somalia, the United Nations emergency food relief agency today airlifted to Mogadishu enough high-energy biscuits to assist 31,000 people for three days.

The United Nations refugee agency is shipping tents, mosquito nets and other essential relief items to Angola, where some 9,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have fled this month alone.

It is more important than ever to forge unity within Libya, the United Nations envoy for the country told the Security Council today, while he called on Libyan stakeholders to regain the optimism generated by the 2015 Political Agreement, which has faded and is being replaced by “frustration and disappointment.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the Chairperson of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat, today signed a new landmark framework to strengthen partnership between the two organizations on peace and security pillars and better respond to the changing dimensions and evolving challenges of peace operations.

The United Nations General Assembly today confirmed the appointment of Germany’s Achim Steiner as the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan has done “significant work” to more effectively protect civilians and respond in case of a crisis, Secretary-General António Guterres has said in a letter to the President of the UN Security Council.

Without peace in South Sudan, millions of people will go hungry and millions of women and girls could be raped as they try to go about their daily lives, including as they search for food, a senior United Nations official today warned.

Raising alarm over increasing reports of serious human rights violations in the Kasai Central and Kasai Oriental provinces of Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations human rights chief underscored that the scale and nature of the allegations could warrant an investigation by an international mechanism, such as the International Criminal Court.

Millions of people are facing the peril of famine in Somalia and South Sudan, and the situation is expected to worsen as the drought and violence fuelling the crises widen, cautioned senior United Nations officials who have just returned from the area.