16 August 2017 – Addressing the growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today said it was important &#8220to dial down rhetoric and dial up diplomacy.&#8221

Speaking to the press at the UN Headquarters in New York, the Secretary-General stressed that the solution to the crisis must be political, and reiterated that his good offices &#8211 meaning the prestige and weight that his title and the UN represent to the world community &#8211 are always available.

&#8220I will remain in close contact with all concerned parties and stand ready to assist in any way,&#8221 said Mr. Guterres.

The message echoes what Mr. Guterres said he had told yesterday’s meeting of the representatives of the Six-Party Talks, who include China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States.

Earlier this month, the UN Security Council strengthened sanctions against DPRK’s exports. Unanimously adopting resolution 2371 (2017), the Council imposed a full ban on the export of coal, iron and iron ore from the north-east Asian country. Previously these items could be exported for livelihood purposes, for a limited amount.

Mr. Guterres today said that consist with that resolution, &#8220the international community must send a clear, coherent message to the leadership of the DPRK: fully comply with international obligations, work towards reopening communication channels and support efforts to deescalate the situation.&#8221

He noted that the resolution sends &#8220an unambiguous message regarding the peace and security obligations&#8221 of DPRK, while also representing &#8220an opportunity to solve this crisis through diplomatic engagement and renewed dialogue.&#8221

Speaking to journalists, Mr. Guterres welcomed the &#8220continued critical engagement&#8221 by Member States and supported &#8220the call of the Republic of Korea to the DPRK to engage in credible and meaningful dialogue.&#8221 These include steps such as confidence-building measures to defuse tension and efforts to de-nuclearize the Peninsula.

The tensions related to the crisis in the region &#8220are at levels not seen in decades,&#8221 Mr. Guterres said.

He noted that more than three million people died in the Korean War, which ravaged the Peninsula from 1950 to 1953.

&#8220We need to heed the lessons of history &#8211 not to repeat the mistakes,&#8221 he said.

He noted also that the potential consequences of military action &#8220are too horrific to even contemplate.&#8221

16 August 2017 – More than 8,000 weapons and over one million burned cartridges were transported to a central warehouse in Colombia as the United Nations political mission in the country concluded the process of the laying down of individual weapons of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) combatants.

&#8220To date, August 15, [the UN] concluded the process of extracting all the armament and scrap ammunition in the 26 camps of the FARC-EP, as well as the collected from the arms caches until now,&#8221 began Jean Arnault, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Mission in Colombia in a press statement.

&#8220In addition to the operation that is being carried out in Pondores, extraction operations are currently underway in four areas: La Reforma, Yari, La Guajira and La Variante. The material transported in the containers consists of 8,112 guns and almost 1,300,0000 incinerated cartridges,&#8221 he added.

Mr. Arnault emphasized that the extraction process included 16 aerial-ground movements and 10 terrestrial movements, which accounted for more than 50 flight hours from three UN mission helicopters and almost 11,000 kilometres travelled.

All unstable material found in the 26 camps, including anti-personnel mines, grenades, homemade explosives and gunpowder was also destroyed.

Turning to arms caches operations, he said &#8220to date there is information about 873 of which 510 arms caches have been successfully executed.&#8221

As the result of the extraction of arms caches operations, the UN Mission in the field counted, to date, 795 weapons; 293,803 ammunitions of different calibre of small arms; 22,077 kilograms of various explosives; 25,216 meters of detonating cord and slow wick; 3,957 hand grenades and 40 mm grenades; 1,846 antipersonnel mines; 27,282 starters; and 1,130 mortar rounds, of which 81 mm, 60 mm and rockets are identified.

The mission head stressed the importance of this process and what it means for the future of Colombia.

&#8220I consider this is an important figure, which shows that there has definitely been an exhaustive process of the abandonment of weapons, not only a process of abandoning individual arms, but also an exhaustive process of abandoning everything contained in the FARC-EP target teams and as President Juan Manuel Santos said, this leads the country to a new stage,&#8221 underscored Mr. Arnault.

According to a unanimously adopted resolution, on 26 September the UN Verification Mission in Colombia will replace the current mission.

16 August 2017 – A ground-breaking global convention on mercury today goes into effect, the United Nations environment wing said, protecting millions of children and infants from possible neurological and health damage.

&#8220Governments that are party to the Convention are now legally bound to take a range of measures to protect human health and the environment by addressing mercury throughout its lifecycle,&#8221 the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a statement.

The Minamata Convention commits Governments to specific measures, which include banning new mercury mines, phasing-out existing ones, regulating artisanal and small-scale gold mining, and reducing emissions and mercury use. Since the element is indestructible, the Convention also stipulates conditions for interim storage and disposal of mercury waste.

The Convention &#8211 the first new global convention related to the environment and health in close to a decade &#8211 entered force today, 90 days after the fiftieth party ratified it on 18 May. There are now 74 parties to the Convention and 128 countries have signed it.

&#8220The Minamata Convention shows that our global work to protect our planet and its people can continue to bring nations together. We did it for the Ozone layer and now we’re doing it for mercury, just as we need to do it for climate change &#8211 a cause that the Minamata Convention will also serve. Together, we can clean up our act,&#8221 said Erik Solheim, head of UNEP.

The Convention takes its name from the most severe mercury poisoning disaster in history. In 1956, local villages suffered convulsions, psychosis, loss of consciousness and coma from eating the fish in Minamata Bay, Japan, in which industrial wastewaters had been dumped since the 1930s. Thousands of people were certified as having directly suffered from mercury poisoning, now known as Minamata disease.

According to UNEP, up to 8,900 metric tonnes of mercury are emitted each year. It can be released naturally through the weathering of mercury-containing rocks, forest fires and volcanic eruptions, but significant emissions also come from human processes, particularly coal burning and artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Mining alone exposes up to 15 million workers in 70 different countries to mercury poisoning, including child labourers.

Other man-made sources of mercury pollution include the production of chlorine and some plastics, waste incineration and use of mercury in laboratories, pharmaceuticals, preservatives, paints and jewelry.

&#8220There is no safe level of exposure to mercury nor are there cures for mercury poisoning, which at high levels causes irreversible neurological and health damage,&#8221 UNEP said, particularly among unborn children and infants.

The first meeting of the parties to the Convention will be held 24 to 29 September in Geneva.

16 August 2017 – Food assistance will be provided to food insecure people displaced by conflict in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), says the United Nations food agency.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and its partner World Vision have launched an emergency operation to provide food assistance to 42,000 food insecure people who, due to conflict, have fled their villages in the country’s Kasai and Kasai Central provinces.

&#8220We launched this emergency response as soon as funds became available,&#8221 said Claude Jibidar, WFP Representative and Country Director in DRC, in a press statement.

&#8220We targeted the most vulnerable among the vulnerable, and our access to these displaced people also depend on security conditions. However, with nearly one and a half million displaced people in the Kasai region, additional donor support is essential for WFP to scale up our operations and reach more vulnerable displaced people,&#8221 he added.

WFP plans to assist 25,000 displaced persons in Kasai Central and 17,000 people in the Kasai province in the coming days, the statement elaborated. However, WFP urgently requires $17.3 million to support the operations scale-up from September to December 2017.

&#8220Food distributions have started in the town of Tshilumba with further distributions scheduled this month. As part of this effort and where safe access is possible, WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) continue to identify the most vulnerable displaced people in areas identified with high levels of food insecurity, as determined in a recent food security study,&#8221 said WFP.

According to its recent food security assessment, WFP said that in the last year, the number of people in need of urgent humanitarian food assistance in the DRC rose by 1.8 million &#8211 from 5.9 million to 7.7 million.

&#8220In conflict-ridden areas, more than 1.5 million people are facing ’emergency’ levels of food insecurity, leaving many with no option but to sell everything they have while skipping or reducing their meals,&#8221 the statement outlined.

In addition to food distributions, WFP is leading the Logistics Cluster, which provides technical and logistical support to humanitarian organizations and has been operational in the Kasai region since June.

&#8220Mobile warehouses have been built to store food and non-food items, while several trucks have been sent to Kasai and Kasai Central to transport food and supplies,&#8221 said the statement.

To meet the huge needs of displaced people in hard-to-reach areas, since June the WFP-led UN Humanitarian Air Service has expanded its support, positioning an aircraft in Kananga in Kasai Central on a permanent basis and flying three times weekly to Tshikapa, Kasai &#8211 making those most in need more accessible to humanitarian organizations.

Scores of people have fled their villages due to the conflict that broke out in the Kasai region in August 2016.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there are some 1.4 million internally displaced people across the Kasai provinces. Additionally, more than 31,000 have fled into neighbouring Angola.

&#8220With up to 3.8 million people displaced in total, the DRC is home to the largest population of internally displaced people in Africa,&#8221 underscored the statement.

The sharp deterioration in people’s food security is mainly attributable to displacement caused by an upsurge in conflict and pest infestation in crops across the country. WFP continues to coordinate with FAO and other partners to serve the most vulnerable people in the Kasai region, as well as in other parts of the country.

16 August 2017 – Condemning a series of terrorist attacks in north-eastern Nigeria, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called for those responsible for these &#8220repeated heinous acts&#8221 to be brought to justice.

In a statement from his spokesman late Tuesday, the Secretary-General extended his deep condolences to the Government and people of Nigeria, and wished those injured a speedy recovery.

&#8220He calls for those responsible for these repeated heinous acts in Nigeria and neighbouring countries to be swiftly brought to justice,&#8221 according to the statement.

Mr. Guterres reiterated the UN’s solidarity and support to the Government in its fight against terrorism and violent extremism.

&#8220The Secretary-General also renews the commitment of the United Nations to support efforts within the framework of the counter-terrorism initiatives of the Lake Chad Basin Commission,&#8221 the spokesman said referring to an intergovernmental organization comprised of the eight countries near Lake Chad.

The Security Council met yesterday to discuss the African-led force on terrorism that has been set up in the Sahel by the so-called Group of Five (G5), which includes Nigeria, along with Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania. The joint task force is operational, but faces a number of challenges, including funding.