Virtual Briefing, New York - 10 August 2020
Mark Lowcock, Emergency Relief Coordinator- As delivered:
Secretary-General, Excellencies, Ministers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, It is my pleasure to welcome you to this briefing on Lebanon.
We are joined today by:
the United Nations Secretray-General Mr. António Guterres;
His Excellency, Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the General Assembly;
The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on ongoing humanitarian crises have created a need to make funding agreements more flexible so that frontline humanitarian actors receive timely and adequate resources and can pivot as appropriate to COVID-19-related activities.
This light guidance was developed by WHO and UNHCR on behalf of the IASC Results Group 4 on Humanitarian-Development Collaboration and in consultation with the UN Joint Steering Committee to Advance Humanitarian and Development Collaboration (JSC). It is to be a live document meant to ensure a common understanding of analysis, funding and financial strategies and effective coordination initiatives. It highlights key steps and questions that should be answered during the process of creating and delivering context-specific collective outcomes.
Mark Lowcock, Emergency Relief Coordinator, Opens the High-Level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen– as delivered
Virtual Meeting, 02 June 2020
Today, the IASC Principals issued a joint statement, expressing alarm about the situation in Yemen, as COVID-19 is spreading rapidly amid unabated conflict and lac of funding for humanitarian programmes.
Against a backdrop of mounting humanitarian needs, especially for families displaced by the fighting, official COVID-19 case figures as of 28 May stand at 253 cases and 50 deaths. Further testing and analysis are required to provide a true picture of the epidemic and the case fatality rate in Yemen.
Following discussions at IASC Principals meeting on 9 April 2020, UNICEF and OCHA have produced some communication content to support our collective advocacy efforts for safe and fast-tracked access for health and aid workers and supplies at borders and in countries.
The UN’s Humanitarian Chief, Mark Lowcock, has called for swift and determined action to avoid the most destabilizing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as he releases a $6.7 billion appeal and an updated global plan to fight coronavirus in fragile countries.
Major IASC organizations have issued a graphic warning of the risk of coronavirus to the world’s most vulnerable countries after disclosing that international donors had pledged around a quarter of the $2 billion the UN requested in the Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19 in March.
Following is the text of the open letter:
Dear donor community,
This document outlines the ‘light’ and ‘adapted’ scale-up protocols to be activated for IASC response to the COVID-19 emergency. It describes the collective approach and principles of action to guide the system-wide response. This activation may be updated to ensure it retains currency in view of the exceptional and rapidly evolving situation.