Welcome to this biweekly briefing of Tuesday the 6th of October.
Just a very quick update from Rolando Gomez from the Human Rights Council, who couldn't be with us this morning, but you all receive his media update every every evening.
You've seen that today's programme basically is all about action on draught resolutions that started at 10 in room 20.
There are 37 draught resolutions to be considered by the Human Rights Council today and tomorrow.
And he has sent you, of course, that list of draught resolution in the order that they are going to be considered.
So he will keep updating you on any further developments.
You will have also received very early this morning the statement from the spokesperson of the Secretary General on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
In it, the Secretary General condemns the continuing escalation of violence in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone, despite repeated appeals from the international community to immediately stop the fighting.
He is gravely concerned by reports of the extension of hostilities, including the targeting of populated areas, and he reminds all sides of their obligations to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure under international humanitarian law.
The Secretary General has once again underlined that there is no military solution to the conflict and he urges the sides to immediately cease all hostilities.
He appeals to all relevant regional and international actors to actively exercise their influence to achieve an urgent end to the fighting and return to negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Mints Group Co Chairs.
Unless there are any questions, I will then go to the agenda.
Yes, Body, sorry before sorry indeed, always nervous indeed.
I have some colleagues who all has some confusion, who said according to the Security Control centre last night they have no access to the ballet after 19 PM.
Hi, basically I arrived yesterday evening, the Paleo, at 8:00 to collect something from my office and the security wouldn't let me in.
They said that as an external person, there's no access after 7:00 at night, even if you have an office in the parade.
Yeah, but it's not the first time of which are why.
Could you take note of this?
If you could maybe contact me after the briefing and we can discuss these types of issues at that time.
We'd like to keep the briefing to questions and answers on the issues that we're covering, OK, But we'll take care.
We'll please contact me right after and we'll try to look at this situation.
OK, Let's move to the agenda, if I could.
Catherine Wiesel from UNCTA this year with an announcement about a new study Maybe.
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We buddy, let's call a briefing.
We have a colleague from UN Habitat with us this morning direct from Nairobi.
Joining us, Christine Knudsen, Director of External Relations Strategy and Knowledge and Innovation is here to just give you a bit of information about you World Habitat Day, which we celebrated yesterday and other events coming up in their area.
It's wonderful to be here with you today in this rainy weather.
I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to discuss how our cities and towns hold the key to the future of our planet and what needs to be done to get that right.
It's been estimated that 3 million people move to cities and towns across the globe every week, and this means that over 2/3 of the global population will be in urban areas by 2050.
Urbanisation is the key driving issue of the 21st century and we need to ensure the long term viability of our cities by reducing their impact on the environment and improving the lives of all those who live in them.
UN Habitat, the United Nations settlement programme.
Could you speak more slowly, slower or do you have something written?
Because like this I cannot make make notes.
Will you send us something?
We will have a note after thank you note and plus it will be part of the summary at the end of the day.
Thank you my my apologies and I will speak more slowly.
I was conscious of time, my excuses.
UN Habitat is the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, the UN agency tasked with promoting transformative change in cities, towns and communities, and Urban October, the month of October, is the month where Human Habitat focuses the world's attention on sustainable urbanisation.
We call it Urban October and it runs from World Habitat Day, the first Monday of the month yesterday, and will run through the 31st World Cities Day yesterday.
With World Habitat Day, we celebrated with 50 events around the world including Fukuoka, Japan, Laos, Seoul, Kabul, Namibia, Ghana, Nigeria and many, many more countries and cities.
The Global Observance is a 2 day event, a hybrid event in Surabaya, Indonesia, starting yesterday with a video message from the Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of Indonesia, the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, the Executive Secretary of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and many others.
All statements are available on our website unhabitat.org.
Today, the Global Observance in Surabaya continues with **** level roundtables at the ministerial level and their deputies from Poland, Rwanda, Costa Rica, South Africa, Kenya, the mayors from Freetown Surabaya and representatives from the European Commission, NGOs, community groups and others.
The Global Observance will be live streamed and available as well on Human Habitats YouTube account with the links available.
This is a pivotal moment for cities and local governments.
95% of the COVID-19 cases are in cities and towns.
Health systems are overstretched, universities and schools are closing and lockdowns are coming back.
The most vulnerable people in urban areas and slums have been hard hit the hardest in terms of health because they are unable to protect themselves and economically due to the unstable nature of their jobs and day labour.
For you and Habitat, housing has always been the key issue around which our mandate revolves.
Now during COVID-19 when we are all told to stay at home, housing is a matter of life and death.
Some 1.8 million people live in inadequate housing, overcrowding conditions, slums, slum like conditions or are homeless and with lack of access to clean water.
This leaves them at a **** risk of exposure to COVID-19.
Without a home, there is little hope of protection and housing is critical for health, safety, dignity and economic opportunity.
As the UN has turned 75 this year, we are having a collective call to action on the transformative potential of urbanisation.
Without cities that are well planned, well governed and able to provide basic services to all residents, we will never reach the Sustainable Development Goals.
Solutions start in cities and I hope that this month during Urban October, you will be invited to look at the challenges but also the solutions that are being developed in our world cities.
At least 300 events will be taking place over the next several weeks in more than 50 countries.
And I'd like to just flag that the theme of our World Cities Day on 31 October is valuing our communities and cities, looking at the key role of local communities during COVID-19.
The flagship World Cities report will also look at this theme of urbanisation and value in communities in this most difficult time.
We'll organise a press briefing here if there is indeed interest later this month.
I hope this overview has raised your interest in the concerns we have around sustainable urbanisation.
We'll be providing comments of course for for reference and ready to respond to any questions.
Christine, are there any questions in the room or our colleague from you in the habitat and I don't see any online.
You were crystal clear and we look forward to the to the to the report at the end of the month.
I would like to look, can you say something about actions that you are taking for all the the problems you mentioned in towns?
During COVID-19 we have been primarily working in two major areas.
One working in the slums and slum like informal settlements to ensure that there is increased access to basic services.
Working with municipalities and city authorities to to increase access to water, in particular for for washing and hygiene, as well as improved monitoring of transport networks.
So this is a key area of transmission as we can imagine looking at informal transportation and formal transportation and ensuring that they can remain both safe and viable and functioning.
The other primary area has been working with local authorities themselves.
We've done a, a long series of live learning events where mayors, transport authorities, water, water services can speak directly to each other from Asia, from Latin America, from North America and Europe and, and, and Africa so that they can learn from each other in real time as the challenges and the solutions are, are being really tackled globally.
I think the other area I said too, I'd like to highlight 1/3 and that is around data.
So being able to get into the granular level of data at a community level, at a neighbourhood level, working to map services that are available, services that may not be functioning and can be repaired as a priority such as water points.
Being able to look at that level of urban data at a more granular level has been another contribution that we've been focusing on primarily over the last six months and will continue to do so in the in the years ahead.
I don't see any other questions.
So thank you for being with us this morning.
Christine, good luck with everything.
Let's move on with Rupert Colville from Human Rights.
Yes, we have two items today, one on Iran and one on rather hidden crisis at sea affecting some 800,000 seafarers including 400,000 trapped at sea.
But I'll start with Iran.
There's been a press release was issued around 50 minutes ago in English, in Farsi, in French, Arabic and Spanish.
So you should have that by now, but I'll summarise contents.
So the **** Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, is today expressing deep concern at the deteriorating situation of human rights defenders, lawyers and political prisoners held in Iran's prisons and has called on the authorities to release them given the danger presented by COVID-19.
Iran is the country most affected by COVID-19 in the region.
Its prison system suffers from chronic overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions.
There are shortages of water, hygiene products and disinfectant, and insufficient protective equipment and testing kits.
There's also a shortage of isolation spaces and inadequate medical care, all of which is contributing to the spread of the virus among detainees and reportedly resulting in a number of deaths.
Starting in February, the Iranian judiciary issued a number of directives on temporary releases of prisoners to reduce the spread of the virus.
According to official figures, some 120,000 inmates were released as a result.
However, more recently, prisoners have been required to return to prison in large numbers.
In addition, people sentenced to more than five years in prison for quote national security offences were excluded.
As a result, many arbitrarily detained prisoners, including human rights defenders, lawyers, jewel and foreign nationals, conservationists and others gaoled for expressing their views or exercising their rights, have been placed at a heightened risk of contracting the virus.
States are responsible for the physical and mental health of everyone in their care, including everyone deprived of their liberty.
People detained solely for their political views or other forms of activism in support of human rights should not be imprisoned at all, and such prisoners should certainly not be treated more harshly or placed at create a risk.
The **** Commissioner is disturbed to see how measures designed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have been used, or rather not used in a discriminatory way against this specific group of prisoners.
One of the most emblematic cases is that is that of Nasrin Sotoudeh who received a combined sentence of over 30 years in prison on charges related to her human rights work.
We believe her life is a considerable risk, that she suffers from a heart condition and has been weakened by a long hunger strike.
**** Commissioner is urging the authorities to release her immediately.
More generally, we're extremely concerned about the Iranian authorities persistent and systematic targeting of individuals who express any dissenting view, the criminalization of the exercise of fundamental rights and the use of the criminal justice system as a tool to silence civil society.
All sentences of people detained without sufficient legal basis should be reviewed and the **** Commissioner is calling in particular for the unconditional release of human rights defenders, lawyers, political prisoners, peaceful protesters and all other individuals deprived of their liberty for expressing, expressing their views or otherwise exercising their rights.
It is, of course, particularly important to rectify such injustices at this time when COVID-19 is coursing through Iran's prisons.
Actually, I have a question about the execution of political prisoners.
Peter, could you start again please and speak loudly?
I, Rupert, I'm asking this question on behalf of Anna Dulu Agency.
We have reports from a number of NGOs and other news outlets of the execution of 15 political detainees in Egypt at the weekend.
Would you like to comment on that?
Peter, I'll have to look into that.
I haven't, I haven't got anything on that.
I do believe the special rapporteurs, there are a group of special rapporteurs who either have just or are planning to issue a statement on Egypt.
I'm not sure if it covers those reports, but I'll look into that and get back.
We have also a question from Lisa Schlein.
Regarding the prisoners, do you have any figure?
First of all, are prisoners who fall I'll in prison, do they receive medical care as far as you know?
And then do you have any figures on people who prisoners who may have died while in prison or after they've been released and those who have?
It's quite hard to get accurate figures in Iran, but according to the head of Iran's prison organisation, as of June, so that's several months ago now, the prison population in Iran was estimated at 211,000 in all, and that's about two, two, just under 2 1/2 times higher than the official prison capacity, which is 84,000.
So obviously that means severe overcrowding.
And that's in a situation where the, you know, prison conditions have been very poor for a very long time with chronic overcrowding.
Now in the context of COVID-19, of course, that's really scary.
It's impossible to to isolate people and there simply is in space.
It's impossible to have proper physical distancing between prisoners again because of the lack of space.
Reportedly there's serious shortages of medical equipment and of, you know, hygiene, disinfectant and so on.
And, and this indeed has been acknowledged by the Ministry of Health in terms of numbers who've died.
We've had reports of people dying, but I, I would hesitate to give a number because it's almost certainly wrong.
As I said, it's not a transparent, it's not at all a transparent system in terms of those types of figures.
Can we go down to Nina Larson from AFP?
Thank you for taking my question.
I was wondering do you have any overview of how many such prisoners of conscience or do you have any sort of estimate RNA round?
And also, when you say that the number given was 211,000, does that exclude the some 120,000 who were released or is that including them?
And do you have any idea how many of those 120,000 have been asked to return to prison?
Again, it's it's hard to be sure on the figures, but what what happened with the sort of temporary releases.
Firstly, as we highlighted in the press release, prisoners who definitely should have benefited from that in some cases didn't, and this was in particular the human rights defenders, the conservationists and so on.
But then as of May, late May, they started to return the, the 110,000 or many of the 110,000 who had been temporarily released.
So of course that was compounding the, the problem of the overcrowding once again having having mitigated it to some extent with the large numbers of releases.
And we, we welcome those large number of releases at the time while still requesting that cases of human rights defenders, lawyers and so on should be released, which they never were.
In terms of the numbers of, of those types of prisoners, no, I don't have, I don't have a number.
There are of course, many cases we've mentioned Nasri Instituta, she's perhaps the most emblematic case, having struggled for the human rights of others all, all her career and then having her own human rights, you know, deprived with a, with a really draconian total of 30 years sentencing for, for various charges on the national security laws.
But there are quite a few others.
There are dual nationals, foreign nationals, there are conservationists, I think there was 8 conservationists, of whom 7 remain inside.
And there are many, many other individual cases, but I can't give you a total number.
I, I have a list of some of the most best known ones here.
So on the conservationists, these were environmentalists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation.
8 of them were were arrested and gaoled.
Originally, 1 Upper Razor Kupaya was granted temporary release and pardon, but the other 7 remain detained despite reports of some of them may have actually contracted COVID-19.
And it should also be stressed that some of these, some of these prisoners, whether they're prisoners of conscience, whether they're political activists, whether they're human rights defenders, do have underlying medical conditions, which is another reason why they should have been been released under the COVID-19 guidelines or directive that was put out by the Iranians in February, which at first sight looked looked quite progressive.
OK, we have another question from Lisa Schlein.
Follow up on the numbers.
The 211,000 prisoners that you mentioned, is that the current total number including those of the 120,000 inmates who had been released?
I hope my question was clear enough.
I mean, it's just really confusing whether 211,000 is the actual number of prisoners right now, including those that were told to return or not.
Yeah, your questions not confusing and the answer is confusing.
That figure 211,000 was a figure given by the head of Iran's prison organisation, but it was in June, back in June.
So that July was four months ago.
So whether that's an accurate reflection now, I would think it does include a significant number of those who had been temporary released earlier because they started to be put back into prison in late May.
But I cannot give you really precise issues on the figures because the system is not is not transparent on a regular basis, even though they do sometimes issue numbers of certain some sort.
So I'm sorry I can't give you more clarity than that.
And this is an old figure and it's not entirely clear if it included all those who were temporarily released to within returned or, or whether just partially, but I think certainly it contains a significant number of them.
I don't see any other questions on this issue.
You have another item for us, Rupert.
And while we are waiting for Rupert, I'm going to leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Michele Zakeo, who will continue this briefing with you.
Yes, our second item is is a rather hidden, but really very huge crisis related to COVID-19 for people at sea.
A joint statement by the UN Human Rights Office, the UN Global Compact and the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has just been released late yesterday in New York, addressing the hidden crisis affecting hundreds of thousands of ship crew members and other workers stranded at sea for many months because of COVID-19.
In all, some 400,000 people are currently stranded on vessels, and a similar number are prevented from returning to ships either to earn their living or to return to their home countries due to COVID-19 restrictions on travel and transit.
In some cases, people have been trapped on the same ship for 17 months or longer, which is far beyond the maximum 11 months permitted under international labour standards.
As well as people working on container ships and other commercial vessels, vessels essential to the global supply chain, similar conditions have been affecting people working in the fishing industry and on offshore oil and gas platforms.
Such conditions are having a profoundly negative impact on basic human rights, including their right to physical and mental health, the right to freedom of movement and the right to family life, because, of course, many of these people have families back home and their home countries.
A number of UN entities, including the International Maritime Organisation and the International Labour Organisation, as well as important bodies such as the International Transport Workers Federation and the International Chamber of Shipping, have been trying to draw attention to the problem and the proposed solutions, including the need to grant crew members key worker status, the central key worker status.
However, government anti COVID measures continue to directly affect the capacity of ship operators to perform routine and necessary crew changes or to grant shore leave.
The responsibility to respect the human rights of seafarers and put an end to the intolerable situation in which they find themselves is not only limited to governments and the shipping sector.
In line with the UN Guiding Principles, this responsibility also extends to the thousands of business enterprises that use the services of maritime freight transport, which accounts for almost 90% of World Trade.
Business enterprises in all sectors, especially multinational firms and global brands, as well as financial institutions, should should assess and act to remedy the human rights situation of seafarers in the context of COVID-19, no matter what place they occupy in the so-called value chain.
The joint statement issued yesterday calls on relevant business enterprises to identify the impacts of the pandemic and of government's responses to it on the human rights of seafarers and other marine personnel and to actively use their leverage, which is considerable, to mitigate those impacts as much as possible.
It calls on on them to communicate this expectation to business partners and suppliers and exercise the leverage they have.
Encourages them to urge governments to implement protocols and measures developed by UN agencies to enable safe crew changes.
And it also calls on such businesses to join forces with industry associations and unions to to exert collective pressure to resolve the situation.
His statement welcomes the efforts undertaken by some companies to address the unparalleled crisis facing maritime workers and appeals to other business enterprises to do the same, noting that the UN Guiding Principles provide blueprint for this urgently needed engagement from the world's business community.
And I just would add, you know, this is really a hidden crisis.
These people are at sea, they're living in in horrible conditions.
You can imagine, you know, you even the existing standards where you you could be on on board ship for up to 11 months is pretty rough.
If you put a family back home, many of these ship crew members are in a pittance, but some of them have been been stuck on board now for 1617 months without any kind of ability to go to shore anywhere.
So it's a really pretty graphically horrible situation.
And despite all the efforts that have been made by the UN, by the unions, by Transport Workers Federation, Chamber of Shipping, so on, there isn't really significant enough movement to, to resolve it.
So we're, we're putting out this call today to try and add our voice to, to, to make something shift and get these people back on shore.
Thank you very much, Rupert, I've got a question from Peter Kenny.
I'm just wondering if you have any statistics on what nations most of the seafarers come from.
I think from what I've heard, there's only about four or five nations which make up a huge bulk of seafarers.
Can you elaborate or do you have any information on that?
I think you'd, you'd have to go to the real experts on this, which would be the International Maritime Organisation, which is fortunately not located here in Geneva, but in, in London also ILO, which has been very, very engaged in the situation.
I mean, there are, there are nations that provide very large numbers of crew members, the Philippines, Indonesia and so on.
And of course, they're, they are very concerned about what's happening to the, their nationals and the impact it has on their families back home.
But for precise figures, I'm afraid I don't have those.
I would go to the experts, which is the IMO and possibly ILO as well.
I mean, I would perhaps just add that, you know, there hasn't been a shortage of effort to, to publicise the situation from, from UN agencies such as IMO and ILO and indeed half a dozen other UN agencies and the secretary General have also been raising this issue.
It's not really getting much attention.
And IMO, for example, put out a press release on the 25th of September, which I would urge you to read.
And they quote ship captain and he says, you know, imagine how you would feel if you had to work every day for 12 hours with no weekends without seeing your loved ones and trapped at sea.
And, and now add that you have to do that with no idea of when you will be repatriated.
Also an issue raised by IMO is the safety of, of ships with people living in these conditions for such a long time and the, the, the impact that overly fatigued and mentally exhausted seafarers, you know, of, of trying to control and run ships, the conditions they're in.
So the safety of navigation, as he put it, is in peril.
So it's, it's a really great.
And there could be economic ramifications too, because the global supply chain absolutely depends on these ships and on their cruise.
So, you know, the, they may be just around the corner.
And there are those who believe we may have a major international economic crisis based on the the breakdown of the shipping system because of the failure to resolve this problem.
Let's give it a few seconds to see whether we've got any hands coming up on the virtual platform.
I don't see any further questions in the room.
Thank you very much, Rupert.
And I'd like to call on Claire Nullis, please, from WMO, who has three items for us, beginning with the hole, the ozone hole in the Antarctic.
The European Union's Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service this morning issued a press release saying that the ozone hole over the Antarctic, which is an annual event, it's one of the largest and one of the deepest in recent years.
At WMO we have a Global Atmosphere Watch programme which works closely with entities such as Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service, such as NASA.
And many other partners and I spoke to my colleagues this morning and indeed it does seem that the 2020 ozone hole grew very rapidly from mid August.
It now seems to have peaked, currently covers 23 square kilometres, sorry, 23 million square kilometres, which is above average for the past decade and it covers effectively most of the Antarctic continent.
There is a lot of variability in the size of the Antarctic ozone hole every year.
It does depend on meteorological conditions, but certainly this year's is one of the larger that we've seen in recent years.
It resembles the 2018 ozone hole.
Last year was very, very small one and what we're seeing this year does indeed confirm that we can't be complacent.
The Montreal Protocol which effectively phased out ozone eating substance substances, it is one of the most effective successful environmental treaties of all time.
We cannot however be complacent and you know despite the the annual blips, the, the long term trend does remain that the ozone hole, the ozone layer which protects US against the sun, it is in a long term recovery.
We do expect it to recover by about 20-60, but we cannot be complacent.
So why, why what's happening this year?
The reason we have a big hole this year is we have a strong and very stable polar vortex.
This effectively has kept very, very, very cold air in quite a confined space in the stratosphere.
So the stratosphere is the layer above the atmosphere.
It's not, you know, where, where you and I live, the air has been below -78°C.
And this is the temperature which you need to form stratospheric clouds.
And there's quite a complex process.
But basically the ice in these clouds triggers a reaction which can then destroy, destroy ozone.
So it's because of that that we are seeing the the big ozone hole this year as we now move into spring in Antarctic.
You know, we do expect the ozone hole will, will become smaller progressively and the ozone layer will, will, will recover.
So that's what's happening in the stratosphere.
Moving on to closer to home, as we've all seen from the terrible images and the tragic loss of life over the weekend, France's Southern ALP Maritime department is recovering from unprecedented rainfall on Friday and Saturday.
It was linked to a so-called Mediterranean episode.
Autumn is typically the peak time of year for such episodes.
It's when you get heavy rainfall which feeds off the warm Mediterranean waters.
The trigger for this particular episode was Storm Alex, which was a very big storm which first impacted the UK, then moved on to Brittany.
It then the weather system from this depression then moved S it over the Alps.
It met with warm air coming up from the South, from the Mediterranean.
And that's when we saw this, this very, very, very heavy rainfall.
Coinciding with that, we saw record temperatures in in parts of Europe.
It's all part of the same weather event.
And here I'm going to quote a scientist called Veronica du Croc.
She's a meteorologist with Meteor France and she coordinates a WMO related project to understand, you know, the, the, the cycles and what's happening in the Mediterranean.
And she said, and this is an article posted by Meteo France Overnight, the amount of rainfall associated with this episode was totally exceptional, up to 500 millimetres of rain or the equivalent of three months.
These are rainfall events which would normally only happen once a century.
It is the second time this year that an amount of 500 millimetres has fallen.
We saw a previous a similar amount in the Ghat region on the 19th of September.
We've never seen two such events in a single year.
There's a lot of analysis and research going on into why this is happening, if it's becoming more frequent because of climate change.
And initial indications do seem to indicate an intensification of heavy rainfall and an increase in an increase in increase in the frequency of such strong Mediterranean episodes.
As I said, research is continuing.
You know, we, we, we'll carry on just to well, the reason for this in very simple layman's terms is climate change means we've got a warmer atmosphere.
So when it rains, the rainfall is heavier.
To put it into context, the ALP Maritime Department received 560 million tonnes of rain in that particular episode, which was basically 24 hours.
This is the equivalent of 190,000 Olympic sized swimming pools in that one region.
So I tweeted this yesterday and again, this puts it even more into context.
I was retweeted by a Danish scientist we work very closely with.
And she said this is roughly the same amount of water the Greenland ice sheet loses per minute on average.
And finally, I've talked quite a lot about hurricanes, what an active hurricane season we are having.
We are now up to using the Greek alphabet because we've run out of regular names.
We are now up to tropical storm Gamma and Delta.
So DD has just strengthened very rapid rate in the past 24 hours and it's now hurricane, it's it's now hurricane strength.
It is following the path.
Tropical Storm Gamma as it makes its way through past the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and up through up to the United United States later this week.
Why is it intensified rapidly?
It's near ideal conditions for hurricane low vertical wind shear, **** amounts of water and warm sea surface temperatures.
the US National Hurricane Centre, which is our regional centre, says it's reasonable to believe that rapid intensification will continue and we expect Delta to become a major hurricane.
So that's Category 3 status or above in about 24 hours when it's near the Yucatan Peninsula.
Again, just to put it in perspective, Delta is forecast to be the record 10th landfalling tropical cyclone in the United States this year.
We've never had this before and the previous record was 9 in 1916.
The National Hurricane Centre and National Weather Service obviously keeping a close eye on this particular hurricane because the concern is it's going to make landfall and impact areas which are still dealing with the after effects of Laura and Sally, which were two quite big hurricanes which which recently hit the US.
Thank you very much, Claire.
A lot of precedent setting there, not necessarily in the good sense of the word.
Waiting to see whether there are any hands coming up online.
I don't see any in the room at present.
I think you're off the hook.
I'd like to invite Thompson Piri, please, from WFP.
He's got an item on Nigeria for us.
Thank you so much, Michele.
You know in Nigeria, WFP has only been in Nigeria since 2015 and we've only been working in the Northeast part of the country because of the well documented conflict and issues and challenges there.
We had no business being in Lagos for that matter.
But we do so now because of COVID as as, as, As for the very first time, we're having to extend and expand our presence in Nigeria to reach more and more people in, excuse me, in these COVID hotspots.
What we have seen is that in Lagos, in Kano, in the South, in the north, Lagos, in the southwest, in the central part in Abuja is that lockdowns and movement restrictions have resulted in people in people, more and more people losing their sources of livelihood, creating extreme levels of vulnerability.
Now, the socio economic fallout of COVID-19 threatens to plunge millions of people into hunger and malnutrition in that country.
One one 1.5 million people need assistance in Kano alone, which is an increase of about 1,000,000 people within a period of six months.
With a lack of income and increasing food prices, particularly in urban areas, more and more people are finding it extremely difficult to meet their food needs.
Now, the people who earn the least are the people who have lost the most in Nigeria.
Approximately 90% of Nigerians depend on a daily wage to survive.
Now with COVID-19, all these informal jobs have dried up.
All these informal workers have now lost up to 80% of their income.
According to statistics from the International Label Organisation, the prices of basic cereals have risen by 15% in the last month alone, while the national prize of Millet, which is the staple in in Nigeria, he has doubled over the past year.
No other country in the world is home to as many extremely poor people as Nigeria.
More than 90 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty.
Analysts fear that this number is said to rise by another 10 million by the end of this year as a result of the pandemic.
And that would translate to about one in two Nigerians living in extreme poverty in COVID-19 hotspots in the cities of Kano, in Abuja, in Lagos.
WFP in partnership with the Federal Government of of Nigeria is planning to assist at least half a million people who are West heat by the pandemic.
In all these three hotspots, WFP will provide cash assistance to the most vulnerable families.
This will be complemented by a generous contribution of in kind food from the government of of of from the government Strategic Grain Reserve which is worth about 1,000,000 United States dollars.
All this is happening on top of the world documented issues in the North East where a cocktail of conflict, the COVID-19 could also spell a hunger catastrophe for millions of Nigerians who are living in that part of the country.
Millions of people, approximately 4.3 million people are already facing dangerous levels of hunger as their lives and livelihoods are being severely disrupted by non state armed groups vying with each other and fighting against government forces for control of the territory.
Now, more than half of families in the Northeast are food insecure.
Over the last six months, conflict has forced an additional 600,000 people into hunger.
Conflict has devastated that region and conflict has also caused severe acute malnutrition among 300,000 children who are in need of medical assistance or they risk dying a preventable death in Bono, in Adamawa, in Yobe.
In the Northeast, WFP is scaling up its food and nutrition support to assist 1.7 million people by the end of this year.
Now, WFP and partners are responding to the rising needs of people in the conflict areas.
We now having to assist people that would otherwise not have assisted.
These are people in Abuja, these are people in Lagos, these are people in in Kano, in the urban centres, in the towns.
We do not know the extent of the need as of now because these are all new areas except in Kano where we had a bit of presence.
But in Lagos and in Abuja, we expect the situation to be as bad.
Assessments are ongoing and in the coming weeks and months, we will have a clearer picture of how much we need to invest in these areas.
Now as things stand, we estimate that for the next 6 months, we need 103 million to provide this critical assistance both in the northeast part of the country to those people who have been affected by the conflict as well as in the Southwest in Lagos, in the Central, in Abuja as well as in Kano in the urban areas to meet the needs of the of what we are calling the new cast load.
That's all I had for you today and I'll stop here to see if there are any questions.
Thank you very much, Thompson for your for enlightening a situation that not hasn't been covered very much, I don't think.
I've got a question from Peter Kenny.
I'm just wondering, can you explain why at the beginning you said WFP should not be in Lagos and they should not be in Abuja?
WFP, Abuja and, and, and Lagos, put simply, a very vibrant city.
They are thriving cities and Nigeria is the is Africa's biggest economy.
Even when we launched our operation there in 2015, it was to respond to the needs in the northeast part of the country where there was an insurgency.
But now we're having to shift to come back into these urban centres where you do not see so much of a conflict or the effects of the conflict.
They are indirectly affected with everything that is happening in the northeast.
But COVID is equally ruthless.
We are now seeing more and more people who are in need of assistance in those areas.
Thank you very much, Thompson.
Let's give it a few seconds to see whether there are any other takers.
I think I see Sarah Bell behind that mask, and I believe that she's going to introduce us to the senior advisor for the UN Secretary General's Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGS.
DF, the Swiss Development Corporation and Kenya Central Bank are launching are launching this Friday the global dialogue on digital finance governance.
Platform is to promote a dialogue between regulator, the financial system development banks and the United Nations to promote innovative governance mechanism to regulate big tech and Fintech and maximise the positive social and environmental impact of their activities, especially in developing countries.
We are organising a virtual launch this Friday at 3:00 PM Geneva time with a great line up of speakers including Akim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, Kenya Central Bank Governor, IMF Executive Director, Facebook Global Public Policy Chief.
My colleague, As Micheli mentioned, Ayaz Mita will explain you the ground for this new platform and expected outcomes.
And I'll send you just after the briefer the invitation to the event.
Much is there anything further on?
That you need to connect that yes I.
Don't see her on see I the way it appears in my programme.
She was here in the room.
No, no, no, he's someone OK, if in in that case it's good because yes, yes, there it is.
Thank you very much for having me with you today and good morning everyone.
I'll just tell you a little bit about the dialogue on global digital finance governance.
As you know, digitalization has been a game changer in how finance works in the last decade across mature markets and developing economies.
If one looks at Kenya, M Pesa, which is the largest mobile payments platform in Kenya, has been processing close to 50% of the country's GDP in 2018.
In Zimbabwe, Echocash has been processing 90% of the country's GDP in 2019.
But perhaps the most important effects of digitalization are just starting to be felt now.
Digitalization is indeed driving the emergence of a new generation of globally dominant fintech platforms, which we call big fintechs, from China's and financial to Paytm in India to mobile money providers in Africa, to ride hailing services in Southeast Asia and of course, Facebook, Google, Amazon in the US, just to name a few.
And what's interesting about these platforms is that they are diversifying into financial services.
Amassing vast amounts of customers and driving market concentration in China, Alipay and WeChat Pay together combine 1.7 billion users and control 93% of the total payments market in the US.
Amazon during the COVID-19 crisis has seen record sales of $11,000 per second and is now concentrating 50% of the market share of the US e-commerce market.
You know, Apple Pay is now totalling 5% of global card transactions and is expected to achieve and reach 10% of global card transactions by 2024.
And these are just a few examples of how these platforms are driving scale in financial services.
But the most interesting part now and we are getting to the dialogue is that these platforms are having a significant increasing impact on sustainable development in developing countries.
Imagine you are a shopkeeper in Bangladesh or in Kenya among hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers selling goods online through Amazon, and your business gets significantly impacted because Amazon decides to prioritise household essentials in the US market for the US customers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Or imagine you are a woman in Rwanda selling things online to earn a livelihood through a Chinese e-commerce platform to the Chinese market and your access to credit.
Or your access to online markets gets restricted because the algorithms making such decisions have been trained on foreign Chinese data instead of your own data.
Or imagine you're a Uber driver or a ride hailing service driver in Uganda, earning a livelihood on that platform and getting access to credit through that platform.
And we know that these platforms, as they scale wages start getting suppressed, working conditions get deteriorated, and that impacts your livelihood as a whole.
And because your access to credit is also tied to you staying on that platform, that's impacting many dimensions of your life.
And of course, data privacy breaches have made headlines across the world in all media platforms.
And so we know that these platforms are having significant impact on sustainable development increasingly across developing nations.
One of the main challenges with their governance is that the governance of these platforms has been traditionally focused on financial stability and money laundering aspects which are important, but they have really failed to embrace these broader sustainable development impacts and effects that I was just mentioning as examples.
And So what the dialogue on governance of digital finance or the governance of global digital finance rather is trying to achieve here is to advance governance innovations that will ensure that the governance of these platforms takes greater account of their SDG impacts and their SDG effects, particularly in developing economies and in developing nations to ensure that those big fintechs benefit.
All this is really one of the most important cutting edge issues of our time, I would say, not so much in terms of financial stability issues, but really cutting edge in terms of broader, sustainable, more inclusive development.
I is it, It's a fascinating topic actually.
I'm going to wait and see.
Questions coming up out of that a bit, maybe I don't know whether I, I can allow myself to ask a question out of curiosity myself because you mentioned the governance of these digital financial platforms.
And maybe if there's a way to summarise concisely, as you so nicely did before, what the state of governance is now and perhaps what you'll be looking at through the the task force and your work, of course.
Thank you for the question.
So, so currently the governance of these platforms is mainly led by or defined by key institutions involved in the governance of global digital finance.
And it's mostly focusing on money laundering issues, prevention of illicit financial flows, and of course, looking at the financial systems integrity and stability.
In many ways, those aspects of sustainable development are seldom understood and not really captured.
And one of the things that the dialogue is trying to do is to actually start exploring this new territory.
Unveil new knowledge and new understanding of what what these sustainable development impacts are going to be, and advance corporate governance.
Innovations that big fintechs themselves might actually pick up on.
And that really allow us to better manage the trade off between private commercial interests and of course decisions that are more relevant to public interest areas, which is one thing.
We are also going to be advancing SDG based principles that will then be informing the governance of these platforms in ways that embrace their SDG impacts in developing markets.
This is really the approach that we are trying to advance here with very concrete, tangible outcomes.
And you know, we wishing you all good luck with this important work.
If there are, I don't see any hands up online.
Thank you, Sarah, thank you very much.
At this point, I think I have a couple of announcements for you.
I, we have a press conference on Wednesday the 4th of October, the 7th of October at 4:00 PM.
Sorry, it's a virtual press conference.
It is organised by WHO and UNICEF jointly and it is the launch of the first joint still birth estimates by UN agencies.
This report is embargoed until the following day, Thursday, the 8th of October, at midnight GMT.
And there are a number of interesting speakers.
You have the Associate Director for Data and Analytics at UNICEF, Mark Harward, the director for the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing at WHO, Doctor Anshu Banerjee and Susanna Hopkins Leisure of the University of Queensland in Australia.
On Monday the 12th of October at 11:00 AM.
There's a hybrid press conference, meaning partly here and partly virtual, and it's a conference by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNDRR.
The speakers will be Mami Mitsotori, the special representative of the secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction and the head of Office for Disaster Risk Reduction here in Geneva.
Also featured is Debarati Guha Sapir, professor for research on the epidemiology of disasters from the Catholic University of Duvan in Belgium.
Real before he went off to his other meeting told me to remind you that on Wednesday there's also a senior new event.
It's a virtual screening of a film.
I don't have the the information in front of me, but I'm sure that you'll be sending around an invitation and he's joining all he he's asking you all to please join if you have time.
On that note, thank you very much and have a great day.
