REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Office at Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from spokespersons and representatives from the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Population Fund and the Universal Postal Union.

Secretary-General’s Travels

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that yesterday the Secretary-General had given a joint press conference together with Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, at the end of the first day of the outreach session of the G-8 Summit in Toyako, Japan. Mr. Ban had highlighted that the world was facing three simultaneous challenges: a food crisis, a climate change crisis and a development crisis. He underlined that all three of them were deeply linked and had to be resolved as such. He also cautioned that at the halfway point of the Millennium Development Goals, targeted for 2015, progress towards achieving them, especially in Africa, was off course. Turning to climate change, he had said that it a long-term goal of at least halving carbon emissions by 2050 had to be set. But short and medium targets, pushing the current market forces towards the necessary technological and market changes were also crucial. He had also called for an investment approach by underlining that every dollar, euro or yen invested today, as well as every ounce of effort, was worth ten tomorrow and a hundred the day after.

Geneva Activities

Turning to Geneva, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Human Rights Committee would end this morning its review of the United Kingdom’s report to the Committee on measures it had taken to implement the International covenant on Civil and Political Rights. (Later, the Committee decided to extend its examination until 4 p.m. this afternoon.) The Committee was also scheduled to review the report of France on Wednesday, 9 and Thursday, 10 July and the report of San Marino on Friday, 11 July.

Junior 8 Summit

Véronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that 39 young people from the Group of eight industrialized nations (G-8) and from the developing world had meet for one week in Japan at the Junior 8 Summit (J-8), in parallel to the G-8 meeting. This was the fourth year the initiative had taken place. The participants had tackled three main themes: climate change; infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS; and poverty and development in Africa. Nine representatives had presented their final recommendations to the G-8 leaders. UNICEF believed that it was imperative for the G-8 leaders to listen to the voices of young people and that together they could turn young people’s ideas into actions, and not just words. In their declaration, J-8 delegates had also underlined the importance for G-8 Governments to support educational schemes including programmes on disease prevention and sexual education worldwide.

European Union Pact on Immigration and Asylum

Jennifer Pagonis of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that the UNHCR was closely following the discussions that had taken place on Monday, 9 July in Cannes at an informal meeting of European Union Justice and Home Affairs Ministers where the French EU Presidency had presented a draft European Pact on Immigration and Asylum. The proposed pact focused to a large extent on managing legal migration and controlling irregular migration.

Ms. Pagonis said that UNHCR considered that there was a need to develop practical and reliable ways to safeguard the rights of asylum seekers and refugees in the context of migration management and border control; a “Europe of Asylum” could not be built without assurances of access to the EU for persons seeking protection.

The draft pact also addressed disparities in asylum decision-making across the European Union, an issue which had been regularly highlighted by UNHCR. The European Union was urged to take up the challenge of improving the quality of asylum decision-making across the EU. The strengthening of practical cooperation among Member States and the creation of a European Asylum Support Office were seen as positive proposals. The reference made in the pact to refugee resettlement was also welcomed, but UNHCR would have liked to see further steps taken to increase the participation of EU Member States in the worldwide refugee resettlement efforts.

Universal Postal Congress

Mr. Laurent Widmer of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) said that the twenty-fourth Congress of the UPU would take place at the International Conference Centre in Geneva from 23 July to 12 August. Taking place every four years, the Congress would bring together delegates from 161 of the UPU’s 191 members, totalling 1,800 participants, ranging from postal operators to national postal regulation authorities, as well as representatives of ministries and members of Governments. The Congress would discuss some 300 propositions on various issues, ranging from financial services to electronic services and physical shipping. Among the high-ranking participants would be Pascal Lamy, General Director of the World Trade Organization; Jean Ping, President of the African Union Commission; Lenin Moreno, Vice-President of the Republic of Ecuador; Hiroya Masuda, Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs and Communication and Nick Staheyeff, Chief Executive Officer of eBay International.

World Population Day

Leila Alyanak of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said that the celebration of this year’s World Population Day would take place this Friday, 11 July, under the theme of “Family Planning”. Family planning had changed the lives of women and had allowed them to choose when to have children. Millions of women still did not have access to modern contraception and a half a million women were dying each year because of unwanted pregnancies or because of a lack of proper health care, she recalled.

Other

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the WHO planned to take part in a nuclear accident simulation taking place in Mexico in order to gauge the effectiveness of communication mechanisms and coordination between the WHO and nine other international organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as with neighbouring countries. The planned mock radiation-emergency would take place at the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant in Mexico and was scheduled for 9 and 10 July 2008. During the operation, WHO would test its Strategic Health Operation Centres based at the WHO Regional Office for the Americas and at the WHO Headquarters in Geneva. The exercise would also be used to assess WHO’s key tools for public health risk detection, assessment and response under the umbrellas of the two emergency Conventions and the International Health Regulations.