REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ms. Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Officer-in-charge of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was attended by Spokespersons and representatives for the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNAIDS, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, the World Meteorological Organization, the International Organization for Migration, and the International Telecommunication Union.

Secretary-General / World Summit on Food Security

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the World Food Security Summit in Rome yesterday, telling delegates: “This day, more than 17,000 children will die of hunger. One every five seconds.”

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Secretary-General stressed the heavy human costs of the food crisis, the need for a comprehensive approach and the deep interconnection between food security and climate change. “There can be no food security without climate security,” he said. He said that we would need to grow 70 per cent more food by 2050, at a time when weather would become more extreme and unpredictable.

Secretary-General / Report on Somali Piracy

The Secretary-General’s latest report on the situation of piracy and armed robbery in territorial waters and high seas off the coast of Somalia has been released yesterday, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier.

In the report - based on Security Council resolution 1846 (2008) - the Secretary-General notes that an expanding maritime presence by Member States is playing a critical role in stabilizing the situation at sea. But, he stresses the need for an integrated approach that involves a concerted effort to stabilize the situation on land, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier.

This approach should include the further development of law and security institutions to complement the peace process. To this end, the capacities of the Transitional Federal Government and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) must be strengthened on land, the report states, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier. There must also be the investigation and prosecution of those suspected of acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea, the report further states.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Committee Against Torture would meet this afternoon at 3 p.m. with the members of the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture, which was set up in accordance with the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The Committee Against Torture was also planned to end its current session on Friday, 20 November, when it would release its concluding observations on the reports on the country reports, which it has considered during this session, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights would also conclude its current session this coming Friday, when it would also releases its concluding observations, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier. Roundup press releases for both Committees would be released on Friday.

Situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that the security situation in South Kivu, North Kivu, Oriental Province and Equator Province was not improving.

In South Kivu, humanitarians did not have access to some areas near Baraka and Fizi, due to insecurity and clashes between armed groups, said Ms. Byrs. Some non-governmental organizations had been forced to relocate their staff temporarily to Uvira. No United Nations mission was taking place, for the moment, on the axis Uvira - Baraka – Misisi.

In North Kivu, the protection of civilians remained a high concern as armed groups continued to loot villages and destroy crops. Cases of amputations of limbs had also been reported. This particularly affected the Territories of Masisi and Rutshuru. Due to security incidents, humanitarian activities had been temporarily suspended in Lubero, said Ms. Byrs.

In Equateur Province, some 22,000 persons had fled insecurity and had sought refuge in the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. The United Nations had sent an inter-agency assessment mission to assess the humanitarian needs of the population in the areas of Bokonzo, Dongo, Gemena and Kungu, said Ms. Byrs.

In Oriental Province, attacks and human rights abuses against civilians also continued to cause displacement. Since the end of August, some 7,500 additional persons had been internally displaced. The present total of internally displaced persons in the Province was of 456,000, said Ms. Byrs.

Answering to a question by a journalist, Ms. Byrs said that the current appeal for the Democratic Republic of Congo was actually financed up to 63 per cent and that US$ 351 millions were still lacking to reach the total of the appeal, which was of US$ 946 millions.

H1N1 Update

Gregory Hartl of the World Health Organization, giving an update of the H1N1 pandemic, said that all virus samples collected in the Ukraine, and that were so far tested by WHO’s two collaborating centers in the United Kingdom and the United States, showed that the virus in the Ukraine was very highly similar to previous isolated viruses. Thus, there were no significant changes in the virus to report to date.

Yellow Fever Mass Vaccination Campaign

Dr. Rosamund Lewis, Project Leader, Yellow Fever Initiative, Epidemic Readiness and Intervention, World Health Organization (WHO) said that WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) were very pleased to announce that the largest-ever single drive against yellow-fever was going to kick-off in Benin, Sierra Leone and Liberia next week. 11.9 million people would be vaccinated in the ten days of the duration of the drive.

Yellow-fever was a viral hemorrhagic fever which could cause devastating epidemics, particularly in urban centers, said Ms. Lewis. In the past, they had had to respond to urban outbreaks with the attribution of millions of doses of yellow-fever vaccines in a very short period of time. The purpose of this campaign was to prevent yellow-fever, rather than to address it as an emergency.

Ms. Lewis said that the GAVI Alliance had made a catalytic contribution of US$ 103 million, which had allowed to kick-start this drive in the highest risk countries in Western and Central Africa. The respective health ministries of the concerned countries were leading the vaccination campaigns, with the technical assistance of WHO, UNICEF, the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and numerous other partners on the ground.

Five countries however still remained on the high-risk list for which vaccines were still needed and funding was still required; an estimated 160 million persons might still be at risk of yellow-fever in the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Guinea, said Ms. Lewis.

Situation of detained Lao Hmong Refugees in Thailand

Andrej Mahecic of the UN Refugee Agency said that today marked three years since a group of recognized Lao Hmong refugees had been rounded up in Bangkok for deportation. The group, now totaling 158, had been in detention ever since. UNHCR called on all parties to play their part in finding a humanitarian solution to their plight and end the detention of this group of children, women and men who were being held in two cells in an immigration detention centre in Nong Khai, Thailand.

Many of the Hmong living in the highlands of Laos had taken part in the war that had engulfed Laos in the 1960s and 1970s, said Mr. Mahecic. When the Pathet Lao came to power in 1975, many tens of thousands of Lao Hmong fled to Thailand seeking asylum, and large numbers had been resettled in Western countries, mostly in the United States.

The situation of the Hmong today was very different from what it had been in the 1970s, but the Nong Khai group were part of the legacy left by a troubled past. Originally 147 refugees, they had been rounded up for deportation and transferred on 8 December 2006 to the Nong Khai immigration detention centre on the Mekong River border with Laos where they had been held since. With babies born in detention, the number now stands at 158, said Mr. Mahecic.

Four countries - the United Sates, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands – had offered resettlement places to the refugees, and UNHCR believed they should be allowed to leave Thailand for resettlement. They had not committed any crime, and their detention served no purpose. UNHCR believed that a solution for this group would not only respond to an urgent humanitarian need but also help turn one of the final pages in the refugee history of the Hmong in Thailand, said Mr. Mahecic.

Reparations for Sierra Leone’s War Victims

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said that in the immediate aftermath of the war in Sierra Leone in 2002, former combatants who had committed atrocities had benefited from disarmament, demobilization and reintegration into civilian life programmes.

This year, seven years after the war, was the first time that reparation for civilian victims of the war had actually become more than a dream, as IOM had supported the Government of Sierra Leone to begin a reparations programme for some of the most vulnerable victims with US$ 3 million of start-up money for 2009 from the UN Peace Building Fund, said Ms. Pandya.

The setting up of a reparations programme had taken time, not just because of the difficulties in defining the worst atrocities and in identifying the most vulnerable among the war victims, but crucially in raising the funds to provide eventual and actual assistance, said Ms. Pandya.

So far, the programme has registered 28,000 applications and a first payment of about US$100 of micro-credit or educational support has been made to 20,000 war victims to show commitment to the process. Fistula surgery and basic medical treatment has also been provided to 200 women victims of sexual violence along with the organization of psycho-social sessions and symbolic reparations events in communities across the country, said Ms. Pandya.

Tomorrow, a two-days donor and investment conference for Sierra Leone would start in London. IOM was looking forward to donors to step forward and commit funds for the reparations programme, said Ms. Pandya. They were requesting for about US$ 8 million for 2010.

The conference was a critical opportunity to help redress some of the worst consequences of the human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law during the 1991-2002 conflict. Such redress would also ensure that public anger at the lack of reparations, which had been undermining peace and reconciliation efforts, would abate, said Ms. Pandya.

Deceived Moroccan Migrants in Italy

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization (IOM) for Migration said that up to 700 migrants who were squatting in abandoned buildings without water and electricity in San Nicola Varco, some 100 kilometers south of Naples, had been evacuated by the Italian Police, with many transferred to nearby identification and expulsion centres.

The migrants, all young men from Morocco, had worked without a contract in the agricultural sector where they had been exploited by unscrupulous employers to labour in nearby greenhouses and fields, said Ms. Pandya. An IOM team had discovered in July that many of the migrants living in the area had had entered Italy with a regular visa. Some said they had paid up to 8,000 Euros to middlemen in Morocco to obtain a seasonal work contract in Italy.

Once in the country, the migrants had found that their employer had disappeared or just refused to employ them. Without a legal work permit, they had become irregular migrants with many falling into exploitative situations when working in the agricultural sector, said Ms. Pandya.

IOM had discovered that many migrants had visas with details of the Italian employers who had refused to hire them and collected all the relevant information and passed it to the local prosecutors, said Ms. Pandya. Without a response from the relevant authorities, IOM was concerned that the potential removal of the deceived migrants would put an end to the on-going judicial enquiry.

This also meant that those who had organized and benefited from this scam might not be brought to justice while the migrants, who had been duped by unscrupulous employers, ran the risk of being denounced as irregular migrants. It would also set a precedent to the effect that the seasonal worker quota could be abused to deceive more migrants in search of better life conditions, said Ms. Pandya.

Twentieth Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said that, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child this Thursday, 19 November, they would launch a Special Edition of the State of the World’s Children report at noon. At 6:30 p.m. the Orchestre des Jeunes de la Suisse romande would give a concert at the Palais des Nations in Room in Hall XIV. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and the European Commission also supported the concert.

Connect CIS Summit

Sanjay Acharya of the International Telecommunication Union said that today at noon, they would hold a press briefing on the upcoming Connect CIS Summit that would take place next week in Minsk, Belarus. This was the second in a series of such summits. The last one, Connect Africa Summit had been Kigali, Rwanda in 2007.

The aim of the summit was to gain political support for increased connectivity and access in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region. At the technical level, the Summit would push for a transition to digital broadcasting and investment in high-speed broadband. It would also highlight the market potential of the CIS, as well as its growing importance as a major information and communication technologies (ICTs) development hub, particularly in the area of software innovation, said Mr. Acharya. During the briefing they would also present the latest ITU report on CIS statistics.

Fifteenth session of the Commission for Atmospheric Science

Gaelle Sevenier of the World Meteorological Organization said that the fifteenth session of the Commission for Atmospheric Science would start tomorrow in South Korea. To give some examples of topics that would be discussed during the session, she cited the necessity to conduct, besides carbon reduction efforts, research in air quality and to develop air quality information systems.

According to the World Health Organization, some 2,3 million people died each year from pollution, said Ms. Sevenier. Carbon reduction efforts could have a direct effect on the health of persons residing in urban areas. But more and more National Meteorological and Hydrological Services were also issuing air quality forecasts, which also played an important role in the protection of health.

Another example cited by Ms. Sevenier was the recently developed methods to conduct carbon tracking over a given region. Such systems would help to get global and regional data on carbon emissions, which could then be used in efforts to reduce emissions and to tackle climate change.

Launch of UNAIDS Reports

Sophie Barton-Knott of UNAIDS announced the launch of two reports: the UNAIDS Outlook 2010 and the AIDS Epidemic Update, which gives the latest data on the state of the AIDS epidemic with the latest global and regional figures. Both reports would be presented during a press conference on Tuesday, 24 November at 9:30 a.m. in Press Room III. The main launch of the reports would take place in Shanghai.

State of World Population 2009

Anne Wittenberg of the United Nations Population Fund said that tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. they would launch the State of World Population 2009 report in Press Room III. Werner Haug, Director, UNFPA Technical Division would be present to answer questions.