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UNOG Bi-weekly press briefing 09 June 2020
Rhéal LeBlanc, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section at the United Nations Information Service (UNIS), chaired the virtual briefing, attended by the spokespersons for the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the Human Rights Council (HRC).
COVID-19: impact on the displaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Babar Baloch, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), stated that massive funding gaps were threatening hundreds of thousands of lives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where surging violence and COVID-19 were exacerbating already dire conditions for millions of forcibly displaced people. As of 7 June, DRC had recorded 4,105 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the second largest number in the southern African region. At the same time, surging violence was uprooting hundreds of thousands more people in the east of the country.
UNHCR warned that without an urgent injection of cash, underfunding would have a devastating impact on critical lifesaving humanitarian programmes. Over the past few months, hundreds of thousands more people had been displaced in eastern and northern DRC following brutal attacks by various armed groups, intercommunal violence and natural disasters. DRC also hosted over half a million refugees – mainly from Rwanda, Burundi, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. While the overall humanitarian situation remained alarming, UNHCR was forced to make difficult choices that result in many of those in dire need not getting the assistance they required. The lack of funding also hampered efforts towards finding lasting solutions for Rwandan and other refugees, for whom the Congolese Government had indicated an openness to facilitating long stay permits and local integration.
Full press release can be read here.
Responding to questions, Mr. Baloch said that the UNHCR was working with the authorities to decongest the sites and help build sustainable shelters. The underfunding affected the efforts to move people to accommodation in which they could be safe. Insecurity, COVID-19 and underfunding represented a truly deadly mix.
COVID-19: food security in Nigeria
Elisabeth Byrs, for the World Food Programme (WFP), said there had been a steep drop in international oil prices, Nigeria’s major export commodity, since the outbreak of the virus, which had sparked fears of a recession. Over 3.8 million people, mainly in the informal sector, could lose their jobs temporarily. This figure could rise to 13 million if movement restrictions continued for a longer period. That would add to the almost 20 million already out of work. In a country where about 90 million people (46 percent of the population) lived on less than two dollars per day, the urban poor who depended on a daily wage to feed themselves and their families had been hard-hit by movement restrictions to contain the spread of the virus.
WFP planned to scale up its assistance to reach three million people in Nigeria, including an expansion to support Government social protection systems in the cities of Abuja, Kano and Lagos. WFP was working to assist up to 1.2 million people through a combination of cash-based transfers and in-kind food distributions in Kano, Abuja and Lagos – areas where WFP was not delivering assistance until now, and where it could meaningfully boost Government social protection efforts. WFP was also gearing up to serve an additional 600,000 people - bringing the total to 1.8 million - in the three north eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, where WFP was providing food and nutrition support to women, men and children affected by a decade-long insurgency. WFP urgently required USD 182 million over the next six months to provide crucial assistance in Nigeria, including to people whose livelihoods and incomes had been adversely affected by COVID-19.
COVID-19: other topics
Rhéal LeBlanc, for the UN Information Service, reminded that the UN Secretary-General was issuing today a new policy brief on COVID-19 and food security, which had already been shared with the media.
Discussing COVID-19 in Latin America, several journalists expressed concern that not enough attention was being paid to Latin America in either the biweekly briefings or the briefings organized by the World Health Organization (WHO). Rhéal LeBlanc, for the United Nations Information Service, stressed that the global pandemic was being taken seriously in all areas of the world and information would be shared as it became available.
Responding to questions, Elisabeth Byrs, for the World Food Programme (WFP), said that 340,000 people in El Salvador were prone to hunger as a consequence of COVID-19 and the tropical storm Cristobal.
Geneva announcements
Catherine Huissoud, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), informed that the World Investment Report would be presented at a press conference on Friday, 12 June at 2.30 p.m. The report would be embargoed until 16 June at 7 a.m. CET. The speakers at the press conference would be Mukhisa Kituyi, UNCTAD Secretary-General, and James Zhan, Director, Division on Investment and Enterprise. The press kit, to be distributed on 10 June, would contain eight press releases: one on global trends, one on the theme chapter of the report on international production beyond the pandemic and six press releases on regional trends.
Rosalind Yarde, for the International Labour Organization (ILO), said that Friday, 12 June would be the World Day Against Child Labour. On that occasion, the ILO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) would be issuing a report on the effect of the pandemic on the world’s children. The previous figures indicated that 152 million children had been subjected to child labour around the world. The new report would include a series of recommendations on the measures governments could take to alleviate the consequences of the pandemic on children. The report under embargo would be sent on 11 June; the embargo would be lifted at 2 a.m. CET on 12 June.
Rhéal LeBlanc, for the UN Information Service (UNIS), informed that today, at 3 p.m., there would be a virtual event “Inequalities during & after COVID-19: Moving from crisis to long-term resilience”, organized by the SDG Lab at UN Geneva in collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO). Participating, among others, would be the UN Geneva Director-General, the ILO Director-General, and the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. More information is available here.
Mr. LeBlanc also stated that on 12 June, at 11:30 a.m., Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director, would address the media for the first time since taking over.
On questions related to the Human Rights Council (HRC), Rolando Gomez said various proposals had been put forth to resume the forty-third session of the HRC on 15 June. While no definite decision had been yet made, it seemed likely that the session would resume in a so-called hybrid format, with some physical presence and some virtual participation. No formal decision had yet been taken either on the forty-fourth session, which was also supposed to start this month. More information was expected this afternoon.
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As world’s water reserves change, countries must prepare for a new reality: WMO
New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
- Past seven years have seen abnorfmal river flows
- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
- Widespread glacier loss across all regions for fourth consecutive year
- Asia and Africa are regions most affected by water-related disasters
- Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard-hit areas
Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
“Some glacier loss is inevitable, but total loss of glaciers is not yet inevitable,” she said, pointing to emissions reductions as central to limiting future losses.
Preparing for moving baselines
The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
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