REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which heard statements from spokespersons and representatives from the World Health Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Myanmar Agrees to Visit by UN Human Rights Expert

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced that the Government of Myanmar had agreed to the visit by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. The Foreign Minister of Myanmar, in a letter sent to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, had suggested that the Special Rapporteur's visit take place before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit meeting, scheduled to open on 17 November. The agreement had come in response to the 9 October letter of Human Rights Council President Doru Romulus Costea to the Ambassador of Myanmar in Geneva, requesting the Government of Myanmar to authorize Mr. Pinheiro's visit, in conformity with the Council's 2 October resolution on the subject.

The announcement came as Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Special Envoy for Myanmar, continued his consultations with the country’s neighbours and regional partners ahead of a planned return trip to Myanmar next month, Ms. Ponomoreva added.

Security Council Condemns Karachi Bombings

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier drew attention to the Presidential Statement adopted by the Security Council yesterday, condemning in the strongest terms the bomb attacks that had taken place in Karachi, Pakistan, last Thursday. Copies of the statement were available in the press room.

Latest Statements by the Secretary-General

Noting that tomorrow, 24 October, was United Nations Day, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the message of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on that occasion was available in the press room. In his message, the Secretary-General noted the growing expectations placed on the UN to resolve the world's problems, called for the capacity of the UN to be strengthened so that it could fully shoulder its mission to prevent conflicts and to establish and consolidate peace, and underscored the need for energetic global measures to combat the challenges posed by climate change, among others.

High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development

The High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development would be held today and tomorrow, 23 and 24 October, in New York under the chairmanship of General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said. The Dialogue would involve all relevant participants in the financing for development process – Governments, business, civil society and multilateral financial institutions. The event, being held just after the annual meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, would contribute to the preparation of the International Conference on Financing for Development to be held in Doha, Qatar, in the second half of 2008, and was in follow-up to the first Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey in 2002. A background press release was available.

United Nations Office at Geneva

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced that, over the coming days, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, would be holding a series of regular consultations with regional groups of Member States to raise a number of issues of common concern, including ongoing UN reform, system-wide coherence and peacebuilding. The Director-General also intended to discuss the need for a comprehensive renovation and refurbishment plan for the Palais des Nations and other logistical issues linked to the functioning of the United Nations Office at Geneva and the services provided to Member States.

Today, the Director-General would meet with the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States, and with the Asian Group, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier continued. Tomorrow, he would consult with the Group of Eastern European States. Consultations with the Group of African States and the Western European and Others Group would take place over the coming weeks.

Turning to the activities of the Human Rights Committee, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that, yesterday, the Committee had reviewed the report of Costa Rica, and today it was considering the report of Algeria on how those countries were implementing their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee's concluding observations on the reports of countries considered during its present session would be made public next Friday, 2 November, at its closing meeting.

Protecting Health from Climate Change

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization announced that the theme of World Health Day (7 April) 2008 would be "protecting health from climate change". WHO Director-General, Margaret Chan, had underscored that the health and well being of populations had to become the defining measure of the impact of climate change and the international community's efforts to address it effectively. The most vulnerable populations were those who lived in countries where the health sector already struggled to prevent, detect, control and treat diseases and health conditions, including malaria, malnutrition and diarrhoea. "Climate change would highlight and exacerbate those weaknesses by bringing new pressures on public health, with greater frequency", Ms. Chan observed. For that reason they "had to put public health at the heart of the climate change agenda" Ms. Chan concluded.

World Health Day 2008 would also mark the 60th anniversary of WHO, Ms. Chaib noted, and activities were being organized both to focus on the relationship between climate change and health and to celebrate 60 years of WHO's efforts in the global health field. A press release was available in French and English at the back of the room.

Global Effort on Safe Injections

WHO was beginning a three-day meeting today to explore strategies aimed at promoting the use of safer needles, Ms. Chaib announced. The annual meeting of the Safe Injection Global Network would bring together UN agencies, donors, experts and industry at WHO headquarters to examine how best to encourage countries and procurement agencies to purchase the safest needles, how to encourage manufacturers to lower the price of such products, and how to boost countries' local manufacturing capacity. Every year, 6 billion injections were given globally with unsterilized, reused needles, causing 33 per cent of new Hepatitis B infections and 2 million new cases of Hepatitis C each year worldwide. Dirty needles were also estimated to account for 5 per cent of new HIV cases annually. A press release was available in English at the back of the room, and the French version would be sent out shortly.

Global Symposium +5

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said available at the back of the room was a schedule, a press release and a press kit on the Global Symposium +5, on information for humanitarian action, taking place this week at the Palais des Nations. On Thursday, 25 October, at 9.10 a.m. John Holmes would be making a keynote address before the Symposium in public session..

Also in the context of the Global Symposium, Ms. Byrs announced that the Regional Director for OCHA's Panama Office, Gerard Gomez, would talk to journalists at Friday's regular press briefing on the launch of a humanitarian website for Latin America and the Caribbean countries.

Somalia: Piracy Attacks on Humanitarian Operations

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that WFP had received a distress call early this morning from a boat that had been carrying WFP supplies. The boat, en route for Mombasa, had already discharged its load of 7,275 tons of food when it was attacked by pirates 60 nautical miles from the Somali port of Brava. The boat had been able to escape, by extinguishing its lights, but had been fired upon and chased by pirates for several hours. WFP was concerned that the season for piracy had reopened and called for international intervention to ensure safe passage for the transport of humanitarian assistance. This had been the third attack this year against a boat carrying WFP supplies to Somalia.

Humanitarian Airdrops in Northern Uganda

Ms. Berthiaume said that today WFP had airdropped food assistance sufficient for 33,000 people to persons in northern Uganda who had been displaced by flooding, in the context of the first-ever airdrop food assistance programme in the country. Some 184,000 had been displaced in the north of the country, and the programme, which had started on 13 October, was scheduled to continue for another three weeks. In addition, WFP had now delivered food supplies by truck, boat and helicopter to 183,000 of the 300,000 flood victims in the west of Uganda.

WFP had not received any new contributions to its September appeal for $26 million to aid those affected by the flooding in the country since 15 October, Ms. Berthiaume stressed, and had only received 21 per cent of that amount to date. Owing to the lack of funding, WFP was already beginning to dig into its stocks to support refugees and those displaced by armed conflict to care for flood victims.

Gulf of Aden Smuggling

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that, in the most fatal smuggling incident in the Gulf this year, up to 66 people had drowned on Sunday in the Gulf of Aden, after being forced overboard by smugglers off the coast of Yemen, according to survivors. Two smugglers' boats had left the Somali coastal town of Bossaso on Saturday with 244 people aboard, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians. The two vessels had reached the Yemen coast off Hawrat Al Shatee on Sunday, where passengers had been forced into deep water and many had drowned. A total of 28 bodies had been buried on the beach, while 38 remained missing. So far this year, more than 20,000 people had made the voyage across the Gulf of Aden in smugglers' boats operating from Somali ports. At least 439 people had died this year and another 489 were missing and feared dead.

Responding to questions on how this year differed from previous years, and what the Yemeni Authorities were doing to prevent smuggling and to help victims, Mr. Redmond noted that the numbers of those being smuggled appeared to be about the same as last year. What was different was the number of fatalities; the death rate appeared to be going up. The Yemeni Authorities were patrolling the coastline, but it was a 300-kilometre coastline, not all of which was under Government control. UNHCR had been training the Authorities, including the Coast Guard, but there had still been some worrying incidents: reports that government forces had robbed individuals once they had reached the beach, as well as cases in which those travelling on the boats had been caught in the crossfire when Government forces had engaged with the smugglers.

Iraq Displacement

Mr. Redmond said that Iraqi refugees continued to arrive in Syria, albeit in much smaller numbers than before. UNHCR field officers who had visited the Syria-Iraq border yesterday (Monday) had estimated that around 300 people had been able to enter. The majority of them had applied for visas in Baghdad, meeting the criteria of the new visa regulations, and had stated their reasons for entering were for business, university education, and family reunification. Before the new visa regulations, about 1,000 to 2,000 Iraqi refugees came across the border into Syria daily.

North Kivu

Mr. Redmond of UNHCR said that the latest escalation in fighting in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had forced thousands more people to flee southwards towards Goma and across the border into Uganda. An estimated 8,000 Congolese refugees who had fled to Bunagana in Uganda over the weekend were still there this morning. That was the third such influx into Uganda since August. Ugandan authorities and UNHCR had appealed yesterday to the refugees to move further inland to Uganda's Nyakabanda transit centre, set up by UNHCR and partners some 15 kilometres away from the border town of Bunagana. Officials in Bunagana had reported two suspected cases of cholera among the refugees there, heightening the need to decongest the small town and to move people to the transit centre, which was equipped with proper sanitation facilities. As of early this morning, some 1,300 new refugees had been registered in the Nyakabanda centre. UNHCR and Médecins sans frontières planned to transport another 150 families from the border to Nyakabanda tomorrow. A UNHCR briefing note was available at the back of the room.

Anna Schaaf of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in an update on ICRC operations this month in North Kivu, said that the violent clashes in North Kivu over the past few weeks had resulted in a flood of victims in health centres in the towns in the region. Humanitarian agencies on the ground estimated that 64,000 families had been displaced in North Kivu since September. To deal with the situation, ICRC had organized meetings with the various parties to the conflict to remind them of their obligations under international humanitarian law; assistance had been provided to 10 regional health centres in the form of medicines and medical personnel; support had been given to the local Red Cross to provide psychosocial assistance to victims of sexual violence; the Red Cross had distributed essential items, such as blankets and sleeping mats, to 1,000 displaced persons in Mugunga; and ICRC representatives continued to visit persons held in detention. ICRC remained extremely concerned by the human rights violations committed by armed forces in the region on civilians, including rape, pillaging and forced recruitment.

Other

Ms. Chaib of WHO said that, following the meeting last Friday on the Global Pandemic Influenza Action Plan to increase vaccine supply, a briefing was being held today to discuss the outcome. Marie Paule Kieny, Director of WHO's Initiative for Vaccine Research, would speak to journalists at 1 p.m. in press room 1. A round-up press release on the meeting would be available at the briefing.

Ms. Byrs of OCHA announced a number of press conferences. Tomorrow, 24 October, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes would hold a press conference chaired by Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier on the humanitarian situation in Occupied Palestinian Territory. The conference would be held at 12 noon in Room III. At 1 p.m., in the same room, David Nabarro, Senior UN System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, would speak on avian influenza. Finally, the scheduled briefing with Eric Laroche, Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, on the humanitarian situation in that country, had been changed to Friday, 26 October, at 12 noon in Press room 1.