REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which provided information about the Secretary-General's visit to Tunis to attend the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society; the Secretary-General's condemnation of suicide bombing attacks against the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul; the Secretary-General's message to an UNRWA meeting in Jordan on the situation in the occupied territories; Geneva activities; human rights and other issues. Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Economic Commission for Europe, UNAIDS, the International Labour Office, the World Health Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Bank and the International Organization for Migration participated in the briefing.

Secretary-General in Tunis to Attend World Summit on Information Society

Mrs. Heuzé said Secretary-General Kofi Annan had arrived in Tunis yesterday to attend the World Summit on the Information Society. The Secretary-General met with Tunisian President, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and would participate in the World Summit which was starting on Wednesday, 16 November. Also on Wednesday, the Secretary-General would be the keynote speaker at the World Electronic Media Forum (15 and 16 November) which focused on the role of the electronic media in the digital age in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, guaranteeing cultural diversity, and promoting economic and social equality. Available in the press room were a number of documents related to the Summit, the Forum and a number of other panels and round tables taking place in Tunis.

Secretary-General Condemns Suicide Bombing Attacks Against International Security Assistance Force in Kabul

Mrs. Heuzé said the Secretary-General was deeply concerned about the upsurge in violence in Afghanistan and strongly condemned the suicide bombing attacks carried out against the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. The Secretary-General called upon the Government of Afghanistan, the Coalition Forces and the International Security Assistance Force to take all necessary measures to address the security situation. Asked whether the suicide attack was intended to affect the UN Mission in Afghanistan, a UN Spokeswoman said that a UN Office for Project Services vehicle had in fact been affected, but, luckily, there were no UN casualties. The Secretary-General's statement was available in the press room.

UNRWA to Organize Meeting in Jordan on Situation in Occupied Territories

Mrs. Heuzé said a hosts and donors meeting would be held in Jordan tomorrow, organized by UNRWA, concerning the situation in the occupied territories. The embargoed message of the Secretary-General to this meeting was available in the press room in English, French and Arabic.

Statement by the President of the General Assembly

Also available in the press room was the statement by the President of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson, at the opening of the plenary debate on the strengthening of the coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance of the Untied Nations, including special economic assistance. Mrs. Heuzé reminded journalists that Mr. Eliasson would be in Geneva next week to hold consultations on the Human Rights Council and would brief journalists on Wednesday, 23 November at 9:30 a.m..

Other Statement and Documents

Mrs. Heuzé said the Secretary-General's message on the International Day of Tolerance, which was commemorated on 16 November, was available in the press room. In a related development, the Secretary-General had named Professor Tomas Mastnak as the Director of the Office of the Alliance for Civilizations.

Available in the Documentation Centre for interested journalists was the report of the Group on Experts on the situation in Côte d'Ivoire which was created according to Security Council resolution 1572 of 2004.

Geneva Activities

Mrs. Heuzé said the Committee against Torture was continuing its fall session. Tomorrow, the Committee would start its consideration of the report of Austria and it would begin its review of the report of France on Thursday, 17 November. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was also continuing with its work, and it would this afternoon conclude its review of the report of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tomorrow, the Committee would start its review of the report of Libya. The Information Service as usual produced press releases on the work of the committees.

The Working Group on the right to development would conclude its one-week meeting on Friday, 18 November.

The Group of Governmental Experts of States Parties to the Conventional Weapons Convention would continue its work until 22 November. The Group was meeting in public. The background release on this meeting was available in the press room.

The United Nations Women's Guild was organizing its annual bazaar on 22 November. The proceeds of the bazaar were donated to children's projects around the world.

Question

Asked if the Secretary-General or the United Nations had issued a statement to condemn the attack on a French journalist in Tunis, Mrs. Heuzé said that in the Secretary-General's meeting with the Tunisian President, Mr. Annan had spoken about the respect of human rights, of freedom of expression and access to information. The United Nations was a strong believer in the freedom of expression and opinion in all its forms, including the freedom of the press.

Human Rights

José Luis Díaz, Spokesperson of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour yesterday expressed concern over the conviction in Tashkent of 15 men accused of crimes in connection with the events in the Uzbek city of Andijan last May. She said the trial had been marred by allegations of irregularities, and that serious questions remained about its fairness. The High Commissioner, who has consistently called for an international inquiry into the events in Andijan, urged the Government of Uzbekistan to ensure that the 15 persons convicted today can enjoy their right to appeal. Noting that the trial that concluded yesterday may be the first in a series in connection with the Andijan events, she called on the authorities to abide scrupulously by the international fair trial standards they had freely accepted. She also reiterated her offer to send a monitor to future proceedings. The statement was in the press room.

Mr. Diaz said he would shortly be sending to journalists a statement by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Philip Alston, in which he called on the Government of Singapore not to proceed with the planned execution of Nguyen Tuong Van who was sentenced to death for attempting to traffic just under 400 grams of pure heroin through Changi Airport in December 2002. Mr. Alston said that the principal problem was the mandatory nature of the death penalty. “Making such a penalty mandatory – thereby eliminating the discretion of the court – makes it impossible to take into account mitigating or extenuating circumstances and eliminates any individual determination of an appropriate sentence in a particular case”, Alston noted. “The adoption of such a black and white approach is entirely inappropriate where the life of the accused is at stake. Once the sentence has been carried out it is irreversible.”

Mr. Díaz said journalists should have received this morning statements by the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Juan Miguel Petit, on his official visit in Greece from 8 to 14 November; and from Arjun Sengupta, Independent Expert of the Commission on Human Rights on the question of human rights and extreme poverty, who had concluded a fact-finding mission to the United States.

Other

Jean Michel Jakobowicz of the Economic Commission for Europe said available was a press release on a report of the Food and Agriculture Organization on the latest Global Forest Resource Assessment. The ECE had played a leading role in the work for Europe. There were interesting figures in the press release.

Dominique de Santis of UNAIDS reminded journalists that on Monday, 21 November at 10:30 a.m. in Room III there would be a press conference on the new joint UNAIDS/WHO report entitled AIDS Epidemic Update 2005. The embargoed copies of the report would be available at the end of this week.

Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Organization said a two-day international conference on decent work in response to the challenges of crises would be held at the ILO on 17 and 18 November. The programme of the conference was available.

Donato Kinniger-Passigli of the International Labour Organization said the research on decent work in response to the challenges of crises had continued for many years and had concentrated on 16 crisis situations around the world, including Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, occupied Palestinian territories and Sierra Leone.

Ian Simpson of the World Health Organization said WHO and the Chinese Ministry of Health had sent a joint mission to Hunan province to investigate three suspected human cases of avian influenza. A team of WHO experts was also working with the Ministry in Beijing, providing laboratory support. It might be up to a week before the results of the investigation of the team were available.

Mr. Simpson said there had been a lot of public concern about whether or not it was safe to eat chicken or eggs or their products and in response, a joint statement with the Food and Agriculture Organization would be published later this afternoon which would address those issues and how to prepare chicken and eggs safely to ensure they could be consumed safely. There was no evidence of any risk from properly cooked chicken or eggs, but the risk came from improperly prepared or cooked chicken and egg products.

In response to a question, Mr. Simpson said that infected chickens which were culled must be kept out of the food chain. At the same time, there was no evidence that people had become sick from properly prepared chicken.

Mr. Simpson said the WHO Global Report on Domestic Violence against Women would be launched on Thursday, 24 November, at 10 a.m. in Room III. This wide-ranging report had been prepared over the past year. It would be launched by Lee Jong-Wook, the Director-General of WHO, the Minister of Health of Spain, and the specialists who had prepared it.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said for the first time, the United Nations would today convene a joint dialogue between humanitarian and development actors on the issue of food security in Africa’s Sahel subregion. The two-day meeting in Dakar, Senegal, would focus on both the immediate and the structural causes of the subregion’s recurring food crises as part of efforts to mitigate and prevent future crises. Since 1972, the countries of the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal) have suffered acute food and nutritional crises that endanger the lives and health of the population and impede development on a regular basis -- approximately every ten years.

Ms. Byrs said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland would be in Geneva on 22 November to participate in a meeting on the reduction of natural disasters. She was trying to set up a press briefing by Mr. Egeland on the same day in the afternoon, but confirmation and details would be announced later.

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark had just donated $ 14 million to WFP's programme in Pakistan which would allow it to continue its work there until the end of January. However, WFP still had only one quarter of the $ 100 million which it had appealed for. Some affected areas could still only be reached by helicopters and raising money for this air lift was very important. It was very important to reach the 200,000 persons living in these inaccessible areas. WFP estimated that up to 100,000 persons in those areas had not received any aid at all since the earthquake.

Ms. Berthiaume said available at the back of the room was a new release on WFP warning that unless $ 1 million was immediately forthcoming from international donors, over 65,000 victims of this year's political upheavals in Togo risked not receiving any food aid at the end of this year. The Togolese refugees were in Benin and Ghana. More details were available in the press release.

Jennifer Pagonis of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees said UNHCR was deeply concerned about the deterioration of the situation in two places on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border. There had been a lot of displacement in this area, the latest as a result of an upsurge in fighting between armed groups. Since October 19, more than 2,000 men, women and children had been displaced by the conflict, and 850 of them had so far crossed the border into Ecuador. The new arrivals in Ecuador said hundreds more could be following. UNHCR and the Red Cross had started to distribute food rations to each family and had deployed a team to the area.

Ms. Pagonis said UNHCR wanted to issue a strong warning about Internet fraud concerning resettlement. Bogus organizations claiming affiliation to UNHCR were using Internet chat groups, special interest groups and dating websites to promise resettlement and employment opportunities in Europe and North America for fees. These were scams. UNHCR never charged refugees for resettlement or for any other services. UNHCR was working to close these websites and warn potential victims about these frauds.

On the South Asian earthquake, Ms. Pagonis said snow was starting to fall in areas above 2,600 metres in Pakistan and the snowline was dropping day by day. Rain at lower elevations was making life miserable. The race to bring relief to earthquake survivors was intensifying.

Patrick Reichenmiller of the World Bank said the World Bank was tomorrow launching its Global Economic Prospects 2006 report. For the first time, the official launch, organized along with the International Organization for Migration, would be held in Geneva simultaneously with Washington. This year, the report looked at the economic implications of migration and transfer flows across borders as well as international remittances. The launch would be held on 15 November from 4 to 6 p.m. at the International Geneva Conference Centre on 17 Varembe street. The embargoed report and the press release were already available on the World Bank website.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said in Pakistan, RAF Chinook helicopters would tomorrow begin an airlift of 180 tons of IOM shelter repair materials and blankets to Kuttan in the Upper Neelum valley. The two-day airlift from Muzaffarabad was part of Operation Winter Race, a plan to airlift 10,000 shelter repair kits by the end of November to earthquake-affected communities above 5,000 feet, cut off from road access by landslides.

Mr. Chauzy said in Ecuador, IOM was assisting a group of more than 600 displaced Colombians who had fled to the Northern Ecuadorian district of San Lorenzo. And three IOM and UNICEF-sponsored research studies on child trafficking would be launched in three regions of Ghana today to determine the magnitude, nature and root causes of child trafficking in the fishing industry. Although IOM had been working to rescue, return and reintegrate 537 trafficked children in the three regions over the past three years through a United States Government-funded programme, the lack of credible quantitative data had made it difficult to assess exactly how many trafficked children still needed rescuing in the north of the country.