Lebanon, Palestine & other topics - Daily Press Briefing | United Nations

Noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

Highlights:

- Lebanon/Humanitarian
- Occupied Palestinian territories
- Security Council
- Ukraine
- West and Central Africa Floods
- Abyei
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Climate and Winter Sports
- Senior Personnel Appointment
- Financial Contribution

Lebanon/Humanitarian
The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners continue to support Lebanon’s health system by providing medical supplies and technical assistance. For its part, the World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling up its emergency food assistance to reach up to one million people impacted by the current crisis.
WFP has also been working with donors and partners for several months to stockpile food supplies in strategic areas. Also, WFP is actively supporting vulnerable Syrian refugees and the most at-risk Lebanese people in Lebanon. Unfortunately, funding shortfalls at one point in the beginning of the year made it necessary to reduce food assistance for those who need the most.
Also, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and its humanitarian partners are scaling up their efforts to assist both Syrian and Lebanese families crossing the border
And in such circumstances, women and children are bearing the brunt of conflicts. That’s why the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is supporting 17 safe spaces for women and girls across Lebanon.
The Humanitarian Coordinator, Imran Riza, who leads the humanitarian response for Lebanon, spoke today about how he deplores the dangerous escalation, saying that some of the attacks that we have seen that disrupt the delivery of essential services, delay life-saving medical care, and violate people’s fundamental right to access healthcare must not happen.

Occupied Palestinian territories
Turning to the situation in Gaza, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is very concerned about the toll of repeated strikes on shelters for displaced people in the Strip. In recent days, at least six schools serving as shelters for displaced people have been struck. That's in addition to a deadly strike on the Al Amal Institute for Orphans yesterday, which had been serving as a shelter in west Gaza City.
Once again, OCHA stresses that international humanitarian law demands that the parties take constant care to spare civilians from harm. Civilians must be protected and their essential needs must be met.
OCHA says that UN humanitarian partners are continuing to provide treatment to malnourished children in Gaza, despite the limited entry of critical supplies and the loss of access to some of the humanitarian warehouses.
Even in the face of these challenges, humanitarian partners screened more than 24,000 children in Gaza for malnutrition last month alone – bringing the total screened since mid-January to nearly 319,000 children under the age of 5. This includes more than 70,000 children in Gaza’s northern governorates. Of all screened children, nearly 22,000 have been diagnosed with acute malnutrition.
In September, nearly 50,000 children under the age of five – as well as more than 18,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women – received supplementary feeding. However, OCHA warns that partners have limited ability to store supplies that require refrigeration.
In September, to date, the World Food Programme (WFP) reached nearly 900,000 vulnerable people in Gaza and the West Bank, including more than 688,000 people in Gaza alone.
This is significantly below the usual number of people reached by the World Food Programme, as a result of Israeli-imposed bureaucratic hurdles, lack of security guarantees within Gaza, insufficient border crossing points. Forced population movement has also disrupted the capacity of partners to maintain operations and distribute items, including food to those who are in need of it.
WFP provided over 9.4 million hot meals through a network of 72 community kitchens. Through that they reached 186,161 people in September. While hot meals and the distribution of fresh bread through bakeries continue, WFP will no longer distribute food baskets through its general food distributions across Gaza in October as the flow of essential goods has been critically restricted.
And in the West Bank, the UN and its partners are gearing up to support Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season.
OCHA and its partners warn that access restrictions and widespread settler violence pose high risks and challenges for these farmers, potentially undermining their livelihoods. At present, more than 9,600 hectares of olive-cultivated lands remain unharvested because of the access restrictions. The result has been the loss of an estimated 1,200 metric tons of last year’s olive oil harvest.