REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, Director of the United Nations Information Service at Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the International Organization for Migration.

Pakistan

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the situation in Pakistan remained extremely difficult, especially in the south, where the Indus river was threatening villages. According to Pakistani officials, the number of people affected by the floods was now 17.2 million, 1,539 people had died, 2,055 were wounded, and 1.2 million houses had been damaged or destroyed.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the situation in Sindh province in Pakistan continued to deteriorate. A second wave of flooding was moving southwards, sweeping away villages and devastating the agricultural sector. At least 3.2 million hectares of standing crops had so far been damaged or lost across the country. Some 200,000 heads of cattle had drowned, and food was needed for the surviving animals whose fodder had been destroyed by the floods. The sowing season was in September and October and the farmers would be urgently in need of seeds to plant, otherwise this would cause a serious threat to the future food security situation of Pakistan. Clean water was the main priority for the people in Sindh province now. The
$ 460 million emergency response plan was now 59 per cent funded, and that was not counting the $ 62 million in pledges.

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said WHO and its partners in the health cluster were continuing to work to provide health care to the affected population in Pakistan. So far, more than 200,000 of acute diarrhoea, at least 260,000 cases of skin diseases and more than 200,000 cases of acute respiratory diseases had been reported in flood-affected provinces. Intensive efforts were ongoing to respond to the worrying disease situation, particularly in terms of diarrhoeal diseases. There were increasing disease threats, particularly for water-borne diseases, in flood-affected districts, especially Sindh and Punjab provinces. Better surveillance was needed to know the health impact of the disaster. Additional funding was needed to support life-health services. Medical supplies covering the needs of 2.2 million persons had been delivered, including medicines to treat 90,500 cases of diarrhoea. WHO could meet health cluster partner demands for the next two months, but medicine stocks would need to be replenished. Some 46 priority flood-affected districts had been identified as needing diarrheal disease centres established. More than 400 health facilities had been damaged or destroyed. A three-phase vaccination campaign was underway in 77 flood-affected provinces with polio and measles vaccinations and Vitamin A supplements. Stocks were available for phases one and two, which were expected to be completed by mid-October and vaccinate more than 14 million children. The third phase was part of a nationwide campaign expected to end in March 2011. Thirty-nine per cent of the $ 56.2 million requested by the health cluster in the response plan was now funded.

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme said the number of people that WFP had reached as of this morning was 1.75 million. The daily target was 150,000 people, which was the number that they could reach all conditions permitting. Today in Sindh, WFP had three helicopters on various missions, dropping high energy biscuits to people who were completely cut off because the helicopters could not land. On the helicopter issue, as it stood now, WFP now had commitments for about 30 helicopters, including the ones it was already using. They should all be in hand in about one week’s time. But WFP would need an additional 40 helicopters on top of that to meet the current needs. In one month, five helicopters would reach about 140,000 individuals with food and non-food items. The official target for food assistance at the moment was six million people over the next three months. Everyone recognized that the numbers of the affected persons were rising, so WFP expected the figure of six million to increase.

Marco Jimenez Rodriguez of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF continued to concentrate its emergency response on water, food, health and protection for children. In terms of clean water, UNICEF continued to deliver 1.5 million litres of water for 1.5 million people every day, particularly in the northern areas. It was also increasingly working in the areas further south. There was a higher proportion of diarrhoea cases in the northwest areas of Charsada, Swat, Noswehra and Peshawar - some of the first places hit by the floods - which made scaling up of water, sanitation and hygiene works a priority to stop the spread of water-related diseases. At this point, the major challenges in the work continued to be access and continued risk of inundations, particularly in the low-laying districts of Sindh. In the past few days, UNICEF had delivered nutritional support to over 20,000 people, mostly children and women who were lactating or pregnant. In terms of health, also over the past three or four days, over 60,000 people, mostly children, received vaccinations against measles, polio and tetanus and Vitamin A supplements. In Jaffarabad, immunizations had to be suspended due to the mass evacuation. due to the approaching waters. In the north, where campaigns had started a few weeks ago, 270 teams had vaccinated over 67,000 children. In terms of child protection, UNICEF had identified nearly 5,000 cases of vulnerable children in different situations. Most had been receiving psychological support.

Andrej Mahecic of the United Nations Refugee Agency said floods had been spreading into new areas of southern Pakistan over the past days, resulting in a mushrooming of encampments across Sindh province. Field staff had reported that some 700,000 displaced people were living in 1,800 settlements – many of these located in schools or colleges or in the camps set up by the Government. UNHCR was distributing tents and other relief items and providing technical advice to local officials on camp management and camp coordination issues. In Sindh’s Thatta district, where dozens of towns and villages had been flooded, a further 150,000 people had fled from Kukkar over the weekend. A new warning had been issued for Shahdadkot, where floodwaters were pouring out beaches in the Tori and Begari canals, threatening to submerge parts of the town which had a population of 400,000 people. About 80 per cent of Jacobabad in Sindh was under three-to-five feet of water and water was moving west towards neighouring Balochistan. Most of the population of Jacobabad had left, but there were still 10,000 to 15,000 people who were staying to protect their properties. The authorities estimated that around 3.6 million people were now homeless in the province, with numbers expected to rise as the flood waters continued south. In Balochistan, a further 33,000 were reported to have moved into the area from Sindh in recent days, adding to the existing one million displaced and flood affected people in the province. UNHCR had so far sent relief items to the three worst affected areas. More UNHCR aid had reached the province in recent days with the arrival of another 720 tents. In light of its new needs, UNHCR was today revising upwards the funding it was requesting to $ 120 million from $ 41 million. These funds would enable UNHCR to provide emergency shelter and assistance to some 2 million most vulnerable flood victims for the next four months.

Jared Bloch of the International Organization for Migration said IOM’s shelter cluster agencies were racing to get more emergency shelter to displaced flood victims as more villages and towns became submerged under flood waters in the south of the country. According to Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, the number of homes damaged or destroyed in Sindh province alone had increased to 462,000 from 176,000 last week. The Emergency Shelter Cluster of 40 international and national aid agencies, which was coordinated by IOM and worked closely with the National Disaster Management Authority, had already distributed over 109,500 tents and 72,000 plastic sheets to provide shelter for some 145,500 families. It had ordered and was waiting for delivery of another 111,000 tents and over 465,000 plastic sheets to provide shelter for another 344,000 families. But new estimates from the National Disaster Management Authority put the total number of households damaged or destroyed at 1.17 million across the country. This would mean that some 8 million people were either homeless or displaced and could be in need of shelter support from the government or international donors. Tens of thousands of families who were evacuated from flood-affected districts of Sindh, including Jacobabad, Kashmore, Shikarpur, Khairpur, Ghotki and Larkana, were now living on roads, under bridges and on higher ground in Sukkur city, which had not been affected by the floods. Others had escaped to Karachi, Hyderabad and Balochistan province.

Christian Cardon of the International Committee of the Red Cross said an update of the ICRC’s activities would be available shortly. ICRC had expanded its activities to Punjab and Sindh provinces in the south of Pakistan. The main priorities continued to be the distribution of food, restoring water supplies, and preventing and treatment of disease. Other priorities were still raising awareness about the dangers of mines and restoring family links.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was meeting behind closed doors for most of this week, and it would release its concluding observations and recommendations on the 11 reports which it had reviewed on Friday, 27 August before closing the session.

The Conference on Disarmament was holding a public plenary this morning.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said there would be a press conference on 26 August at 4:30 p.m. in Room III by the United Nations Environmental Programme on the entry into force of the amendments to add nine chemicals to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

Jean Rodriguez of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe said there would be a press conference at 11 a.m. on 26 August concerning the launch of the communication campaign on road safety during the 2010 FIBA Basketball World Championship (28 August - 12 September 2010, Turkey). Speakers would be Ján Kubiš, UNECE Executive Secretary; Patrick Baumann, Secretary General, International Basketball Federation (FIBA); and the Permanent Representative of Turkey, Ambassador Oguz Demirapl.

Isabel Garcia-Gill of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said there would be a video conference in Room III at 5 p.m. on 30 August with New York Headquarters on the "InterAcademy Council's review on processes and procedures of the IPCC". Speakers were Rajendra Pachauri, PhD, Chairman of the IPCC and the three working groups' co-chairs: Thomas Stocker, PhD (WG I), Chris Field, PhD (WG II), and Youba Sokona, PhD (WG III). The report would be handed over to the UN Secretary-General and the Chairman of IPCC at 10 a.m. New York time on 30 August and the press conference would be at 11 a.m. There would be no advance copy of the report or an advance executive summary, but the report would be available online after the press conference.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said insecurity was spreading across the eastern North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly the Walikale Territory in the past two months. Armed groups, including the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda and May-May groups, had been threatening the population and perpetrating a series of attacks against them. From 30 July to 3 August, these groups attacked and took control of the town of Luvungi. During the attack they looted the houses and raped women in Luvungi and surrounding areas, according to the International Medical Corps, a non-governmental organization, which was providing medical care and psycho-social care to the victims. Humanitarian access to the region was very limited due to insecurity. At the beginning of 2010, there had been a rise in attacks on humanitarian actors in the region, a 50 per cent rise in comparison to the same period in 2009. There were more details in the briefing notes.

In response to a question about the attacks happening around 30 kilometres away from a MONUSCO base, and the response of MONUSCO, Ms. Momal-Vanian said her colleagues in New York had stressed yesterday that 30 kilometres may not sound very far, but in densely wooded areas, this was quite a distance. Also, the villagers were blocked and prevented by the attackers from reaching the UN mission to raise the alarm.

Central African Republic

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme said available at the back of the room was a release on the Central African Republic where WFP was feeding 600,000 people. The Central African Republic had a life expectancy of just over 46 years. At the moment, chronic malnutrition was 37.5 per cent and acute malnutrition was 10.2 per cent. The country very much needed the small but very important amount of food that it received. WFP was drawing the attention of donors and the public to the very serious situation there, as WFP would most probably have to cut rations to people who already were almost at the very bottom of the human development index. If WFP received $ 6 million by September, or even a portion of that, it would be able to borrow money to get food on the open market from nearby countries to the Central African Republic in order to avoid cutting school feeding for children in October as well as assistance to pregnant and lactating mothers.

Kyrgyzstan

Andrej Mahecic of the United Nations Refugee Agency said UNHCR and its partners were racing against time in southern Kyrgyzstan to construct transitional shelters for displaced families whose homes were destroyed during the violence, arson and looting in June. With the coming winter only months away, UNHCR estimated that some 75,000 people remained displaced and needed shelter. Some of these people were being accommodated in UNHCR tents which UNHCR provided as part of its emergency response to the displacement crisis. Others were staying with families, friends or neighbours. The situation in southern Kyrgyzstan was still tense. As the lead protection agency monitoring access of the displaced population to basic rights and services, UNHCR had been working with the authorities on prompt registration and restoration of lost or destroyed personal identity documents. Without these documents, people faced difficulties in getting access to services and exercising their social, economic and political rights. UNHCR had been supporting the Kyrgyz Government in establishing mobile teams to visit affected areas and to re-issue identity documents. Systematic monitoring and interventions by UNHCR partners commenced just days after the violence subsided and were ongoing. Pending the provision of permanent housing for displaced people through the government reconstruction programme, UNHCR had developed a transitional shelter strategy to held people whose homes had been completely destroyed. The actual implementation of this crucial shelter effort, developed in coordination with Kyrgyz authorities, began early this week.

Other

Jared Bloch of the International Organization for Migration said IOM Guatemala and its partners was assisting approximately 2,400 families affected by Tropical Storm Agatha in Guatemala. This included non-food item assistance as well as rehabilitating 10 public buildings which were used as shelters during emergencies.