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UNOG Bi-weekly press briefing 12 January 2021
Rhéal LeBlanc, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service (UNIS), chaired the hybrid briefing, attended by the spokespersons and representatives of the International Labour Organization, the World Food Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Unitaid.
Food security situation in southern Madagascar
Lola Castro, Regional director for Southern Africa and Indian Ocean States for the World Food Programme (WFP), said three consecutive years of drought coupled with a sharp recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic had left a third of the population in Southern Madagascar struggling to put food on the table. There was no let up on the worsening drought conditions in 2021 and a poor harvest in 2020 meant communities had few resources to fall back on and many had had to leave their homes in search of food and work. Some 1.35 million people were projected to be food insecure — 35 per cent of the region’s population. The figure was nearly double what it was in the same period last year. While recognizing that donors had been supportive over the years and thanking them for their support, WFP urgently needed US$35 million to fund lifesaving food and cash distributions and malnutrition treatment programmes. This also included emergency school feeding for 150,000 children.
Responding to questions, Ms. Castro said WFP had worked with communities to increase their resilience in the face of climatic shocks. It did so by building irrigation channels, for instance, and considering the key role played by women in ensuring families’ food security. This was a complex endeavour which required long-term financial engagements.
Peru: Police used unnecessary and excessive force during protests
Elizabeth Throssell, for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said police in Peru had used unnecessary and excessive force when faced with mass protests between 9 and 15 November 2020, according to a UN Human Rights Office report published today that stressed the failure of security forces to comply with international human rights norms and standards. The report was the product of a Human Rights Office mission to Lima from 17 to 22 November, at the invitation of the Peruvian Government, to gather information regarding alleged human rights violations committed during protests challenging the legitimacy of the interim president, as well as expressing other causes of social discontent. Among its main findings, the report noted that police officers did not distinguish between peaceful protesters, who were in the majority, and a minority who were alleged to have acted violently.
A full press release is available here. The full report can be accessed here.
Ms. Throssell, in response to journalists’ questions, said there had been cooperation on the part of the Government. It was critical that investigations thoroughly address not only what happened in November, but more broadly allegations that police had not abided by international standards.
Launch of world’s first long-acting medicines centre at University of Liverpool
Hervé Verhoosel, for Unitaid, said Unitaid was launching today a new research Centre at the University of Liverpool. Established as part of a US$40 million international research consortium, primarily funded by Unitaid, the University of Liverpool’s Centre of Excellence for Long-acting Therapeutics (CELT) would be the first of its kind in the world. By repurposing existing medicines into slow-release formulations, where drug effectiveness can be sustained over several months, “long-acting” technology had already been successfully implemented in the fields of contraception and schizophrenia. It now had the potential to improve the outcomes for treatment and prevention of deadly diseases such as HIV, malaria, Hepatitis C and tuberculosis, which particularly impacted low- and middle-income countries.
Geneva announcements
Rhéal LeBlanc, for the United Nations Information Service (UNIS), said the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF)’s Advisory Committee would be meeting this week at the Palais des Nations, from 13 to 16 January 2021. The Committee was recently established to discuss outstanding issues related to the selection mechanism of a unified executive and to put forward concrete and practical recommendations upon which the LDFP plenary shall decide. The national elections date of December 24, 2021 remained a sine qua non for the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), a guiding principle and unrenounceable goal. In this sense, the Committee’s mandate would be strictly time-bound. The 18 members of the Committee represented a broad geographical and political diversity and included the participation of women, youth and cultural components. The first meeting on Wednesday morning would begin at 9.30 a.m., with opening remarks by Acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General Stephanie Williams.
The first public meeting of the 2021 session of the Conference on Disarmament would take place next Tuesday, 19 January, at 10 a.m. and would be a virtual meeting. The first part of the session would take place until the 26 March and begin under the presidency of Belgium. The other presidencies for this year session would be : Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada and Chile. The second part of the session would take place from 10 May to 25 June and the third part from 26 July to 10 September.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child would open next Monday, 18 January, at noon, its 85th session — a virtual one during which, given the current COVID-19 situation, it would not review any country report.
On behalf of the Human Rights Council (HRC), Mr. LeBlanc added that the HRC would hold an organizational meeting today at 3 p.m. to select the country rapporteurs for its Universal Periodic Reviews taking place in 2021. The meeting would also continue the discussion on the election of the Council President (from the Asia-Pacific Group) and the 4th Vice-President (from the Eastern European Group) for 2021
Responding to a question on the Secretary-General’s intentions regarding a second mandate, Mr. LeBlanc said the Secretary-General had conveyed to the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council that he was available to serve a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations, if that were the will of the Member States.
Rosalind Yarde, for the International Labour Organization (ILO), said that, on 21 January, the ILO would be kicking off the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour following on from a resolution that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2019. Almost 100 million children had been removed from child labour over the last two decades, bringing numbers down from 246 million in 2000 to 152 million in 2016. Nevertheless, progress across regions was imbalanced and challenges remained with younger age groups. This was being aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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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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