UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for peaceful, credible and inclusive elections in Cameroon, ahead of the country’s presidential election on Sunday.
The UN chief, in a statement issued by his spokesperson, Mr Stephane Dujarric, called on all stakeholders to “exercise restraint before, during and after the election”.
Guterres also urged all Cameroonians to exercise their democratic rights, urging all candidates “to address any complaints related to the electoral process through established legal and constitutional channels”.
Nine candidates are contesting the elections to the country’s highest body on Sunday.
The Secretary-General condemned all threats of violence or acts of intimidation by any group and reiterated that all grievances should be addressed through inclusive dialogue.
“The United Nations stands ready to provide support in this regard,” the UN chief added.
Insecurity is a concern in Cameroon in the country’s north, as a result of activities of the Boko Haram terrorist group.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there are some 160,000 persons displaced across the country, with a majority of them in the south-west.
Tag: UN
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UN chief urges peaceful, credible elections in Cameroon
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7.7 million people need urgent assistance in northeast Nigeria
The United Nations (UN) says the humanitarian crisis in northeast Nigeria has spread across the Lake Chad region and remains severe with 7.7 million people in urgent need of assistance.
TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports the UN made this known on Thursday while revealing UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock will travel together to Nigeria (5-6 Oct) and Chad (6-7 Oct) on a mission to highlight and support joint humanitarian and development efforts in these countries.
According to the UN, in Nigeria, Mr. Lowcock and Mr. Steiner will meet with high-level government officials and representatives of the humanitarian, development and donor communities.
On 6 October, they will travel to Borno State and visit a site for internally displaced persons, a transition centre and a rebuilt community.
“Humanitarian and development partners are linking up efforts to respond to the devastating consequences of the ongoing violence in north-eastern Nigeria while seeking to promote durable solutions for affected communities,” the intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international co-operation stated.
The UN has stepped up coordination to improve resilience and self-reliance of local communities through the restoration of basic services such as water and electricity, the rehabilitation of schools and hospitals and emergency jobs programmes.
In Chad, the two UN principals are expected to meet President Idris Déby, senior government officials as well as humanitarian and development partners.
On 7 October, they will visit a nutrition centre in N’Djamena where international NGOs and UN agencies are treating children with malnutrition amid one of the worst nutrition crises the country has ever experienced.
A third of Chad’s population – more than 4.9 million people – urgently need humanitarian assistance due to food insecurity, malnutrition, and health emergencies.
The joint mission will provide a unique opportunity to assess UN coordination on the ground, to mobilise resources to address longer-term needs, and seek further commitments from Government and partners.
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UN deputy chief decries child sexual abuse, exploitation
The UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, has expressed concern over the worsening rate of sexual abuse and exploitation of millions of girls and boys, describing the development as regrettable.
Mohammed made the statement at an event co-organised by the World Childhood Foundation, the Swedish Mission to the UN, the UN Office of Partnerships and other non-profits at the UN Headquarters in New York.
“Every day, across all countries and levels of society, millions of girls and boys face the alarmingly common childhood experience of sexual abuse and exploitation,” she stated.
Mohammed said that governments could and must do more to end the daily sexual abuse and exploitation of girls and boys worldwide.
According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), globally as at 2014, at least 120 million girls under the age of 20 – about one in 10 – have been forced to engage in sex or perform other sexual acts.
Millions more, including millions of boys, never tell anyone about being abused for fear of stigma or reprisals, UNICEF said.
Similarly, the UK-based independent think-tank Overseas Development Institute, estimates that the global economic impacts and costs resulting from the consequences of physical, psychological and sexual violence against children could be as high as $7 trillion.
According to Mohammed, this massive cost is higher than the investment required to prevent much of the violence.
“Faced with growing evidence of the impacts and the emergence of the internet in facilitating the sexual exploitation of children, governments have started to act,” the deputy UN chief noted.
“Target 16.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls on all countries to “end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against, and torture of, children” by 2030.
“All over the world, governments are updating their laws and policies to more effectively criminalise child sexual abuse and exploitation. Governments are also building systems to better protect and care for child victims.
‘Civil society, the media and industry are key allies in these efforts,” the UN deputy scribe stressed.
Mohammed noted that thanks to data collected over the years, “we now have a deeper understanding of what works to make society safer for children,” insisting on the need for multi-sectoral and multi-partner approaches, within the UN and at the national levels.
“Preventing violence and exploitation of children is everyone’s business, everywhere at all times. We must address this challenge and break the silence,” Mohammed stressed.
During the event, a benchmarking tool developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit, known as ‘Out of the Shadows’, was officially launched.
The Out of the Shadows tool was created to allow an easy collection and sharing of best practices worldwide, a reliable identification of gaps and widen discussion of a subject that remains taboo in many societies.
The tool covers 40 countries and assesses how effectively nations are addressing issues of child sexual abuse across four categories.
These are the safety of the environments in which children evolve; the legal frameworks in place; the level of government commitment and capacity to address the issue and the level of engagement of the private sector, civil society and the media.
The index revealed that the wealthiest countries tended to have the highest rankings, but even so, their scores revealed critical gaps in terms of achieving all the necessary protective conditions for children.
Björn Sellström, Coordinator for Crimes Against Children for INTERPOL, said that much of the sexual violence was being widely shared over the internet.
“In terms of trends, and this is of course worrying, what we see in terms of online sexual abuse, is that a vast majority of the children we’re looking at are ‘white’ children…coming from the Western part of the world.
“We see younger and younger kids. And the younger the kids are, the more violent the abuse, especially for boys,” Sellström explained.
He added that the majority of the materials depicted pre-pubescents or toddlers, which pointed to the fact that perpetrators were often well-known to the victims. -
Boko Haram: UN to visit Maiduguri, others in October – Onyeama
Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, has said a United Nations joint delegation will visit Maiduguri, Bama and Abuja first week of October, to scale up its humanitarian intervention in the terrorism-affected areas.
Onyeama said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria after a meeting with the UN team leaders on the sidelines of the 73rd UN General Assembly in New York.
The minister said that the team would be led by the UNDP Administrator, Mr Achim Steiner and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and Head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mr Mark Lowcock.
He said that the joint UN Development Programme Principal-level mission was part of the world ogranisation’s efforts to support the victims of Boko Haram insurgency in the region.
Onyeama said that the visit was a sequel to the High-Level Conference on the Lake Chad Basin Crisis in Berlin in September, where the international community committed to a comprehensive crisis response in the region.
Onyeama said that the visit was aimed at discussing with senior government and donor officials in Nigeria on how to further strengthen humanitarian and development responses, including national and local ownership in the northeast.
“We are looking essentially on how to build on the humanitarian programme and the UN has been very involved and supportive on the humanitarian front in the northeast
“We realised that we have to move towards the development stage. They also want to hear from the Nigerian government.
“And of course, it is about the reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement; it is about creating an environment for economic growth which will require education and also jobs,” he said.
The UN had said in a statement that the objectives of the joint UNDP-OCHA Principal-level mission, was to address humanitarian, resilience and stabilisation needs of communities to prevent a protracted crisis in the northeast.
“The urgency to make progress on the New Way of Working by the UN Country Team and the Humanitarian Country Teams has been amplified by large-scale humanitarian needs and the related imperative to address the root causes of the Lake Chad Basin crises in a comprehensive and sustainable way.
“Accordingly, the Nigeria UNCT/HCTs are jointly working on formulating collective outcomes which will guide planning and interventions of humanitarian and development actors,“ he said.
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UN tasks social media giants to clamp down on hate speech
United Nations (UN) human rights chief on Wednesday said social media giants, including Facebook, must proactively block content inciting hatred.
TheNewsGuru (TNG) reports Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the social media must also prevent online campaigns which target minorities, such as those undertaken in Myanmar.
Zeid, who said Facebook had allowed its platform to be used to incite violence against Rohingya, was speaking after UN experts accused Myanmar generals of “genocidal intent”.
He said he didn’t feel Facebook took the issue seriously at first but that the company’s attitude began to change after Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told a Geneva press conference in March that Facebook was being used in the country to spread hate speech.
“But it shouldn’t be because the press or the human rights community highlights the problem for them then suddenly to respond. They should be aware of it ahead of time,” Zeid said.
“So I don’t think they should wait until the crisis begins. They should be thinking proactively about what steps they will take to mitigate that,” he added.
However, Zeid said there was a danger that social media could be over-regulated in a way that breaches human rights law including the right to freedom of expression.
Tech giants should “keep the broadest space available and open to the exercise of freedom of expression”, relying on international human rights law for regulation, he said.
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African migrants rejected by Italy were tortured, raped – UN
African migrants rejected by Italy in a standoff with the European Union on August 15, said they had been held by smugglers for up to two years in Libya and many had been beaten, tortured and raped, the UN said on Tuesday.
The 150 migrants, mainly Eritreans and Somalis, were rescued in the Mediterranean but waited 10 days while Italy’s anti-immigrant government refused to let them disembark, until Ireland, Albania and the Vatican agreed to accept them.
A further 27 unaccompanied minors and 13 people needing urgent hospital treatment had earlier been allowed ashore in Italy, whose government had threatened to cut funds to the European Union unless other states took in the migrants.
The UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said its staff had gathered testimony from the migrants.
All were malnourished and exhausted and said they had been held against their will in Libya for up to two years, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a UN briefing in Geneva.
“In Libya they complained that many had been beaten and tortured by smugglers and traffickers seeking ransom money from their families in their countries of origin,” he said.
“Italian doctors who attended all the women … reported that many of them said they had been raped while in Libya.”
He said IOM believed thousands of migrants were still being detained – held in safehouses or warehoused, but getting people to the shore had recently become more difficult because of violence in the west of the country.
A drop in the value of the Libyan dinar had also made it more difficult for sub-Saharan Africans hoping to earn enough in Libya to fund their sea voyage to Europe, prompting the smugglers to look for other nationalities with more resources.
Italian Interior Minister Salvini, who has led a popular crackdown against immigration since his government took office in June, has said he was under investigation by a Sicilian prosecutor for abuse of office, kidnapping and illegal arrest over the migrant standoff.
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Iran sanctions row: U.S. rejects authority of UN court
Washington rejected on Tuesday the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice – the highest UN court – as it fights an Iranian lawsuit over U.S. sanctions.
The lawyer representing Iran, Mohsen Mohebi, had condemned the U.S. on Monday for “naked economic aggression” as it launched its case in The Hague.
Iran argues that U.S. sanctions – imposed after the U.S. withdrew from an international nuclear deal with Iran – contravene a decades-old bilateral treaty, and are destroying the national economy and currency.
The court did not have the appropriate jurisdiction to try the case, said Jennifer Newstead, a legal advisor for the U.S. State Department responded on Tuesday.
“For this court to accept Iran’s legal manoeuvering would have grave and sobering consequences,” she warned.
The U.S’ withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six other world powers was legal, she said.
It “was made in recognition of the threat that Iran’s behaviour continues to pose to the national security, foreign policy and the economy of the US.”
“The U.S. does intend lawfully and for good reason to bring heavy pressure to bear on the Iranian leadership to change their ways.”
Iran is calling for the sanctions to be cancelled and for Iran to be compensated.
Tehran had itself for years violated UN resolutions and supported terrorism and needed to be contained, Newstead said.
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UN mourns death of ex-chief, Kofi Annan
The United Nations is mourning the death of former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who passed away peacefully after a short illness, according to a statement published on his official Twitter account on Saturday.
The current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid glowing tributes to the former Secretary-General, who headed the intergovernmental organisation from 1997 to 2006.
The renowned Ghanain diplomat was 80 years old.
His foundation announced his death on Saturday and the late UN scribe reportedly died in hospital in Bern, Switzerland, in the early hours of Saturday.
Guterres hailed Annan as “a guiding force for good” and a “proud son of Africa who became a global champion for peace and all humanity.”
“Like so many, I was proud to call Kofi Annan a good friend and mentor.
“I was deeply honoured by his trust in selecting me to serve as UN High Commissioner for Refugees under his leadership.
“He remained someone I could always turn to for counsel and wisdom – and I know I was not alone,” Guterres said in a statement.
Annan was the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, after Egyptian diplomat, Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali exit in December 1996.
The UN chief said: “He provided people everywhere with a space for dialogue, a place for problem-solving and a path to a better world.
“In these turbulent and trying times, he never stopped working to give life to the values of the United Nations Charter. His legacy will remain a true inspiration for all us.”
Kofi Annan was born in Kamasi, Ghana, on April 8, 1938.
He joined the UN system in 1962 as an administrative and budget officer with the World Health Organisation in Geneva, rising through the ranks to hold senior-level posts in areas such as budget and finance, and peacekeeping.
He served as UN Secretary-General for two consecutive five-year terms, beginning in January 1997.
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139 aid workers killed in 2017 – UN
The UN said 139 aid workers were killed in 2017, 102 wounded and 72 kidnapped in the line of duty, renewing the call for civilians and aid workers everywhere to be better protected.
Mark Lowcock, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and Humanitarian Affairs chief, stated this while remembering all the humanitarians killed in the line of duty, just ahead of World Humanitarian Day.
In 2008, the General Assembly designated August 19 as World Humanitarian Day to raise awareness of humanitarian assistance and pay tribute to the people who risk their lives to provide it.
Marking the fifth consecutive year in which more than 100 aid workers lost their lives on the job, the UN said 2017 was the highest recorded annual death toll since 2013, when 156 humanitarians were killed.
In March, three aid workers were killed in Rann town in Borno, following an attack by suspected Boko Haram insurgents, while at least one other aid worker was critically injured and another three were missing.
Also in 2017, of the 42,972 people reportedly killed or injured by explosive weapons, three out of every four victims were civilians – a 38 per cent increase on 2017.
Lowcock said: “It is unconscionable that civilians and the aid workers who are trying to help them are killed and maimed in conflict zones with utter impunity.
“We need this to end. It is imperative that we hold men with guns and power accountable when civilians and aid workers are illegally targeted”.
Each year on August 19, the world pays tribute to the humanitarians who deliver aid to vulnerable communities in some of the most dangerous crises on the planet; some of whom make the ultimate sacrifice.
The 2018 World Humanitarian Day also marks the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, which took the lives of 22 staff and other civilians.
The August 2011 bombing of the UN building in Abuja by the Boko Haram terrorists, also killed at least 21 and wounded 60.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted in his Protection of Civilians report published in May, that attacks in just six conflict-affected countries were responsible for more than 26,000 civilian deaths or injuries.
The UN chief emphasied that to reverse such high numbers of civilian casualties, required sustained advocacy.
In addition to ensuring safe, unimpeded passage of supplies, Governments and non-State military groups are legally obligated to protect civilians and aid workers in armed conflicts.
“It is imperative that we hold men with guns and power accountable when civilians and aid workers are illegally targeted,” Lowcock argued.
The UN and humanitarian partners have launched a ‘living petition’ as the theme for the 2018 Day, calling on world leaders to better protect civilians and aid workers.
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FG reacts to UN’s report of paying ‘huge ransom’ to secure Dapchi girls’ release
The federal government on Friday reacted to a United Nations report that it paid ‘huge ransom’ to secure the Dapchi school girls release from Boko Haram’s captivity.
The government however insisted that no money exchanged hands between the federal government and members of the terrorists group for the release of the abducted Dapchi schoolgirls.
Recall that a United Nations report had claimed that the Nigerian government paid a “huge sum” to secure the release of the girls earlier this year week after they were captured at their school dormitory.
But in a statement issued in Illorin, Kwara State on Thursday, Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, insisted that government did not pay any ransom to Boko Haram to free the girls from captivity.
Mohammed, in the statement signed by his media aide, Mr Segun Adeyemi, challenged anyone who has any evidence of payment to publish such.
The Minister said, “It is not enough to say that Nigeria paid a ransom, little or huge. There must be a conclusive evidence to support such claim. Without that, the claim remains what it is: a mere conjecture.”
Recall that in March 2018, Boko Haram released the girls its members kidnapped at the Government Girls Science and Technology College in Dapchi, Yobe State. However, it failed to release one of them, Leah Sharibu, allegedly because she did not renounce her Christian faith.