INTERNATIONAL – The United Nations humanitarian chief today stressed the need to transcend the divide between relief aid and development work, urging action on global commitments made at last month’s World Humanitarian Summit (WHS).

“By adopting this shift, we can not only deliver better results for people affected by crisis, but also broaden the development gains for millions of the ‘furthest behind’ so they can chart their own course out of aid-dependency,” the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, said at a panel discussion during the Economic and Social Council’s Humanitarian Affairs Segment from 27 to 29 June.

The annual ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment provides a platform for Member States, UN entities, humanitarian and development partners, the private sector and affected communities to discuss emerging and pressing humanitarian issues, as well as activities and issues related to strengthening the coordination of the UN’s humanitarian assistance.

In his remarks, Mr. O’Brien noted that the international community must undertake a new way of working and financing that promotes “not just surviving, but also thriving.”

“We in the UN are the first to recognize that we cannot continue business as usual,” he said, adding that the commitment to action on transcending humanitarian-development divides, signed by eight UN agencies at the Summit, shows the willingness of all involved to work to collective outcomes.

In addition, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and NGO networks made significant commitments to advance this new way of working, he said.

He also cited the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which, through its iinternational network on conflict and fragility, committed to strengthening the humanitarian-development nexus. Its financial and political support will focus on five to 10 countries initially but will be progressively expanded by 2020.

In Bambari, Central African Republic, humanitarian operations are being hindered by poor roads, banditry, looting and random violence by militias. (2015) Photo: OCHA/Gemma Cortes

Mr. O’Brien went on to highlight a need to look beyond short-term, sector-based projects. The response to the current El Niño crisis in Ethiopia and beyond is a phenomenal example of how the authorities there, supported by humanitarian and development partners, have been able to avert an even deeper crisis by reducing risk and improve resilience, he noted.

Given most crises are protracted or recurrent, stakeholders must work over multi-year time frames, identifying the kinds of results they want to achieve over three to five years, or longer, he said. In the Sahel, resident and humanitarian coordinators are working together to implement a multi-year regional response plan, while addressing how to integrate risk into development assistance.

Lastly, the UN official said, it is vital to take each entity’s strengths and comparative advantages into account, rather than institutional mandates, in order to determine which is best-placed to get the job done.

However, there will always be situations, in which moving national development indicators forward will be extremely difficult, as seen in Syria, Yemen, and other active conflict zones, where humanitarian action primarily will be about securing access to move life-saving assistance to people in dire and urgent need, he noted, while adding that there are also many other situations where closer collaboration toward common objectives and results is needed.

“We face a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” he said. “The 2030 Agenda [for Sustainable Development], the Sendai Framework [for Disaster Risk Reduction], the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are among the most prominent signals of the momentum that is building on this front.”

Titled “Moving beyond business as usual: Working together to reduce need, risk and vulnerability,” the panel discussion also featured speakers, including David Nabarro, Adviser to the Secretary-General on the2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and Amir Mahmoud Abdulla, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP).

INTERNATIONAL – The 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly today elected Sweden, Bolivia, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan to serve on the world body’s Security Council for a period of two years, starting from 1 January 2017.

After rounds of voting at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, only one non-permanent Council seat remains to be filled. Italy and the Netherlands had been vying for the remaining seat, but the voting yielded no clear winner. The two countries then suggested sharing the two-year term, each with a one-year period, with a decision on this proposal postponed to Wednesday.

Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security, with all UN Member States required to comply with Council decisions. The Council’s 10 non-permanent seats are allocated according to a rotation pattern set by the Assembly in 1963, to ensure a proportionate representation over time from the different parts of the world: five from African and Asian States; one from Eastern European States; two from Latin American States; and two from Western European and Other States.

At today’s election, the General Assembly members voted by secret ballot for five seats divided by geographical grouping – three from Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, one from Eastern Europe, and one from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Bolivia and Ethiopia were chosen by their regional groups and had no competitors. Kazakhstan won the seat reserved for Asia Pacific against Thailand, while Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden had competed for two seats for Western Europe.

The newly-elected countries will replace Spain, Malaysia, New Zealand, Angola and Venezuela.

The Security Council has 15 members, including five permanent. The five permanent members, each with the power of veto, are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Other current non-permanent members are Japan, Egypt, Senegal, Ukraine and Uruguay.

The Security Council is also responsible for determining the existence of a threat against peace and to respond to an act of aggression. It is also responsible for finding peaceful means to settle a conflict or a dispute between States. In some cases, the Council can resort to sanctions or even authorize the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.

The Security Council also recommends to the General Assembly the appointment of the Secretary General and the admission of new Members to the United Nations.

INTERNATIONAL – A United Nations expert today urged the world body’s Human Rights Council to address xenophobia and its conceptualization, trends and manifestations in the context of an acute migration crisis, and with an action plan “carefully adapted to domestic realities.”

“In the current era of increased mobility, widespread forms of overt physical violence, hate speech and discrimination are rooted in xenophobia,” the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Mutuma Ruteere, told a news conference at the UN premises in Geneva.

He recommended that governments and stakeholders give due attention to a set of key elements in designing and implementing strategies with improved effectiveness. These elements include locally diagnosing the situation, implementing preventive actions, identifying an appropriate intervention scale, and reviewing and assessing the strategy.

“Strategies for countering xenophobic discrimination must be context-specific and carefully adapted to domestic realities,” Mr. Ruteere said. “Addressing xenophobia necessitates shifting the institutional, political and economic incentives that support, continue or heighten xenophobic practices.”

“The role of local actors, including local government, is paramount in designing and implementing tailored, local administrative and other measures to overcome local barriers to integration and peaceful cohabitation,” he added.

The independent expert also spoke about combatting the glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism. Referring to reports of violence perpetrated against Roma, Muslims, Jews and other minorities and vulnerable groups, Mr. Ruteere strongly condemned the denial of the Holocaust and expressed concerns about cyber-racism and hate propaganda through social media platforms, as well as about the proliferation of extremist groups in sports.

“I call upon States to provide for heavier sanctions regarding offences with racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic or homophobic motivations and to collect disaggregated data and statistics on racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic crimes,” the Special Rapporteur said, adding that education remained the most effective means of countering the negative influence of extremist movements.

Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

INTERNATIONAL – With the El Niño climate event devastating Central America’s so-called Dry Corridor, where one of the worst droughts in decades has left 3.5 million people food insecure, United Nations agencies will gather this week to discuss ways to improve the long-term response to the weather developments in the region.

In a news release, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said it will convene a high-level meeting in Rome on 30 June, along with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), “to focus on the urgent need for long-term action to address the impact of El Niño, including building resilience for food security and nutrition for the most vulnerable populations in the affected countries.”

“The aim of the high-level meeting is to increase awareness of, and the response to, this protracted and recurrent crisis, and to mobilize the international community to support the efforts of governments, UN agencies and other partners,” FAO added.

El Niño is the term used to describe the warming of the central to eastern tropical Pacific that occurs, on average, every three to seven years. It raises sea surface temperatures and impacts weather systems around the globe so that some places receive more rain while others receive none at all, often in a reversal of their usual weather pattern.

While El Niño, and its counterpart La Niña, occur cyclically, in recent years, mainly due to the effects of global climate change, extreme weather events associated with these phenomena – such as droughts and floods – have increased in frequency and severity, FAO noted.

In El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the most affected countries, approximately 2.8 million people are dependent on food aid, according to the UN agency, which also flagged that that the situation is putting at risk the livelihoods of millions of small-scale family farmers in the Dry Corridor, many of whom are heavily dependent on subsistence agriculture.

The term Dry Corridor defines a group of ecosystems in the eco-region of dry tropical forests in Central America covering the lowlands of the Pacific coastal area, and most of central pre-mountain region of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and parts of Costa Rica and Panama. Climate risks in the Dry Corridor are mainly represented by recurrent droughts, excessive rains and severe flooding affecting agricultural production, with greater intensity in degraded areas.