On participation of the delegation of Belarus in Humanitarian Affairs Segment of ECOSOC
22.06.2017Larysa Belaskaya, Head of the Directorate for Multilateral Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, takes part in the session of the Humanitarian Affairs Segment of ECOSOC, which is being held at the UN Office in Geneva on 21-23 June 2017.
Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jürgen Schulz, Vice-President of ECOSOC, as well as Rudolf Müller, Head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Geneva, took part in the opening ceremony.
During the general discussion L.Belskaya drew the attention to the necessity of coordinated efforts of the international community to prevent humanitarian crises. In particular, she mentioned the importance of strengthening of countries’ wellbeing in the context of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, the necessity to take additional coordinated efforts to fight against international terrorism, the importance of implementation of Paris Agreement on climate change, as well as the capacity building of national hydrometeorological services to increase preparedness to natural disasters. Belarus’ delegation further underlined existing potential of strengthening the cooperation between UNOCHA and World Meteorological Organization.
L.Belskaya noted the workshop that had been held jointly be Belarus and UNOCHA in Minsk in September 2016 on the functioning of the international humanitarian system and providing international humanitarian aid. Belarus also took efforts to overall update the information on its humanitarian activities in the UNOCHA humanitarian aid database.
Being an active partner of the UN humanitarian activities, Belarus provided humanitarian aid of more than 1 mln US dollars to Ecuador, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Syria and Ukraine in 2016-2017.
