Secretary-General / Travels, Gaza & other topics - Daily Press Briefing (3 Sep 2024)
Noon Briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.
Secretary-General / Travels
Gaza
Occupied Palestinian Territory
Middle East
Lebanon
Syria
Yemen
Mauritania
Ukraine
DPRK Korea
Senior Personnel Appointment
Resident Coordinators
Financial Contribution
Briefing – today
Secretary-General / Travels
The Secretary-General just arrived in Beijing, China, where he will take part in this year’s Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on Thursday. There, he will highlight the importance of South-South cooperation to build solidarity and drive progress on shared development goals. While in the capital, he will also meet with senior government officials.
Earlier today he was in Shanghai, where he spoke at the opening ceremony of a workshop on Artificial Intelligence Capacity Building. He said that AI capacities are concentrated in a handful of powerful companies – and even fewer countries. Meanwhile, too many countries face significant challenges in accessing AI tools.
The Secretary-General underscored that to truly harness AI’s potential, we need international cooperation – and solidarity, and we must urgently bridge the AI gap for developing countries.
Without adequate guardrails, he said, AI could further worsen inequalities and digital divides and disproportionately affect the most vulnerable.
Over the weekend, the Secretary-General was in Singapore where he met with President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, and other senior officials.
Gaza
The Secretary-General has been following very closely the campaign against polio which is now underway in the Gaza Strip. He has been moved by images of young children receiving their vaccinations in the midst of rubble and utter ruin. It is clear to him that the polio pauses are a rare ray of hope and humanity in the cascade of horror that we have seen in Gaza. The Secretary-General commends everyone involved in this polio vaccination campaign, especially the extraordinary humanitarians leading this effort.
This coordinated action is a contrast to what Gaza has endured since the acts of terror unleashed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, Mr. Guterres said. Gaza has become synonymous with relentless bloodshed - most recently the killing of six hostages, which the Secretary-General utterly condemned.
He added that much of the world has come to know more about those hostages through the stories and advocacy of their loved ones.
The Secretary-General reiterates his call for the immediate release of all hostages and an immediate ceasefire.
If the parties can act to protect children from a deadly virus, he said, surely they can and must act to protect children and all innocents from the horrors of war.
Occupied Palestinian Territory
In terms of more details about the polio vaccinations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that local pauses aim to allow us to reach more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 across the Gaza Strip.
The World Health Organization’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said today that around 74,000 children are estimated to have been vaccinated yesterday, on the second day of the campaign. This brings the total number of children vaccinated so far to over 160,000. Dr. Tedros added that day three of the campaign is ongoing.
In parallel to the local pauses, our OCHA colleagues say that Israeli bombardments, ground operations and heavy fighting continue in multiple areas, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement and destruction of houses and other civilian infrastructure.
Full Highlights: https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/noon...
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