Juba Conference Room UNITED NATIONS MISSION IN SOUTH SUDAN
ARIANE QUENTIER, UNMISS SPOKESPERSON
Thank you very much for being here today. This press briefing will focus on the issues of Protection of Civilians. You’ve seen that we have put around posters and images of the various UNMISS compounds and where we have Protection of Civilians sites, whereby, if you need more precise explanation, we can give them with the pictures in the back for those who are doing video footage.
Our two guests today are Jeffrey Buenger who is the UNMISS Senior Protection of Civilians Advisor and the Chief of the Protection of Civilians Unit of UNMISS who is going to talk to you about United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2155. We also have Derk Segaar who is the head of the Recovery, Reintegration and Peace building Unit of UNMISS and, as such, is overseeing the Protection of Civilian Sites that we have throughout the country in our bases.
As you know, Resolution 2155 that has just been adopted by the United Nations Security Council on the 27th of May 2014 is a review and a restructuring of the former mandate of the Mission. The Mission, in view of the current circumstances, is going to focus its activities on protection of civilians. This is not only because protection of civilians on its compounds is a very important part of the new mandate, but also through documenting and monitoring human rights violations and abuses as well as facilitating the access of humanitarian actors to displaced populations and displaced populations to humanitarian actors. So protection of civilians is really at the core of the new mandate through Resolution 2155. This is a mandate for six months. The United Nations Security Council members will take stock of the situation in six months and, depending on what has happened, will look or not look into a new mandate, an extension of it or how to proceed.
Before I give the floor to the speakers, let me make a few announcements: The first one is that the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, has appointed a new Force Commander. The new Force Commander is General Yohannes Tesfemariam. Some of you might remember him because he has been the Head of Mission and the Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA). He is replacing General Delali Sakyi, the Ghanaian Force Commander, who has left on the 9th of June 2014. The Secretary-General made a statement about the departure of General Delali where he said, and I quote him, that he was “grateful for his dedication and his leadership in UNMISS”.
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