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 UN Refugee Agency, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Organization for Migration, UNAIDS, the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development, the United Nations Environmental Programme and the International Labour Organization.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the Conference on Disarmament would be holding its next plenary at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 7 September. Much of the Conference’s discussions in recent weeks had been on the high-level meeting on disarmament called for by the United Nations Secretary-General which would be held on 24 September in New York. The meeting was entitled “Revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations”. Between now and 24 September, when the Conference would conclude the third and last part of its 2010 session, it would continue to debate the high-level meeting as well as discuss its annual report to the General Assembly. The Conference was presently presided over by Cameroon.

Ms. Momal-Vanian also wished to point out that on Thursday, 9 September and Friday, 10 September, the Palais des Nations would be closed so there would be no briefing next Friday.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development would brief journalists at 11:30 a.m. today in press room 1 on the launch of its UNRISD flagship report entitled “Combating Poverty and Inequality”, which outlined how poverty reduction depended on the interconnection between economic development, social policy and politics. This launch was presently taking place at the Palais des Nations, in the presence of Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, and Sarah Cook, Director of UNRISD.

Secretary-General in Austria

Ms. Momal-Vanian said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Vienna yesterday and held talks with Austrian officials, including Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger. The Secretary-General also addressed a conference on fighting corruption. The event was part of the funding conference for the new International Anti-corruption Academy, which would soon open its doors just outside of Vienna. Speaking at the conference on fighting corruption, the Secretary-General said that the academy’s founding represented a “milestone” in global efforts to battle corruption. He highlighted that more than a trillion dollars were stolen or lost, every year, because of corruption – money badly needed for the Millennium Development Goals. Today, Secretary-General Ban would meet with the Austrian President before heading to the Austrian town of Alpbach to address a forum and a Security Council retreat and take part in an annual retreat with senior UN officials.

Pakistan

Ms. Momal-Vanian said lifesaving assistance was continuing to be distributed to millions of people in Pakistan affected by the floods. Major constraints continued to hamper humanitarian operations, making it impossible to deliver aid at the necessary speed. The major obstacle was the staggering scale of the disaster itself, with 18 million people affected across an area larger than the surface area of England. That posed enormous challenges for the procurement, handling, and delivery of relief supplies. The floods were currently wreaking havoc in Sindh and there were growing fears about Balochistan provinces.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the United Nations and its partners were increasingly concerned about the humanitarian situation in flood-torn Pakistan’s provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. In Sindh, in Thatta district, 1,300 square kilometers had been flooded over the past two days. In Balochistan, there were 1 million displaced persons, including 600,000 who had escaped the waters in Sindh. There was continuous movement of affected populations, making the task of distributing humanitarian aid among them more and more difficult. The logistical constraints were enormous. Another challenge was the necessary funds, as certain sectors of the appeal were not receiving the necessary contributions. For example, the water and sanitation sector was funded by only 27 per cent. The response plan for Pakistan as a whole was covered by 63 per cent. She highlighted that the appeal would be revised later this month, around 17 September.

Adrian Edwards of the United Nations Refugee Agency said the situation in Balochistan remained very much a concern. Conditions in the thousands of spontaneous settlements and camps that had sprung up in the last few weeks were really desperate. There were reports overnight of new flooding. There was a persistent threat of water borne diseases, shortages of shelter and very limited quantities of food for children. In southern Sindh, where flood waters hit Thatta and surrounding districts last week, thousands of families were now living in the streets without water and sanitation. According to the authorities, about 20 per cent of people displaced by floods in this area were returning to villages to salvage and protect what property they still had there. People returning by boat would remain cut off until waters receded. Others were expected to remain displaced for several months. There was an urgent need to improve conditions for the displaced and support people in returning home. UNHCR was deploying additional staff to identify needs of the most vulnerable groups. Given the scale of the crisis and aid shortages, they wanted to see better targeting of aid and more orderly mechanisms of distribution.

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme said she had left an operational update at the back of the room. The total number of people who had now received one month rations was 3.1 million as of this morning. The first consignments of locally produced rice were being shipped out. WFP was trying to get as much as was available locally, as it was a stimulus to the local economy and it was faster to receive the commodities. WFP was also going forward with expanding the food basket to bring on line yellow peas, salt, tea and sugar, in addition to the wheat, vegetable oil and high energy biscuits and ready to use supplementary foods that were also already being distributed. WFP had also added a new operational hub in Hydrabad, which would support the expanded response in that area. There were some openings now in the Swat valley, although the main road was still cut. WFP had been able to get some trucks through, the first four of an expected twenty trucks would be getting into the town of Utror today. That was good news and WFP hoped it was a sign of better things to come. At any one time, there were about 600 trucks on the roads, moving food around Pakistan. WFP was also expanding support for farmers and 6,500 seed kits were being handed out to farmers in Swat and other areas.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said she had contacted the Food and Agriculture Organization and they would be able to send someone to the next briefing to talk more about the agricultural sector.

Marco Jimenez Rodriguez of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF was providing clean water to 2.2 million people every day. This is 200,000 people more than the last time she briefed journalist. This was thanks to the restoration of 980 water supply systems, almost twice what the last figure was. Nearly 600 tankers distributed the water. In terms of sanitation, over 700 more latrines had been set up, serving 40,000 people. In terms of vaccinations, around 250,000 more people had been vaccinated against polio, measles, tetanus as well as a Vitamin A supplement. The vaccinations would continue. Nearly 1 million people continued to receive medical assistance through the UNICEF mobile clinics as well as the medical programmes supported by UNICEF. In terms of education, 111 temporary learning centres had been established for the benefit of 14,000 children, and the objective over the next weeks was to achieve 250 such centres for the benefit of 10,000 more students.

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said WHO’s main concern remained the rise in the number of cases of vector borne diseases, especially all kinds of diarrhea and malaria in Sindh and Punjab provinces. WHO had opened a new office in the south of Sindh province. WHO would be sending out a release on the treatment of more than 10,000 cases. This would bring the number of treated cases in the province to 150,000 treatments. Since the start of the flooding, some 4.5 million people had been treated against the main four cases of disease in the affected areas. The number of hospitals and health clinics destroyed or damaged by the floods had now reached 436, out of a total of 1,100 hospitals and health clinics in the region. There was also a stagnation in the financing of the response plan concerning health, having only received 43 per cent of the $ 56,2 million that the health cluster had requested for the next three months. WHO was also working with other partners to see how it would be possible to increase the number of female health staff to help pregnant and lactating mothers.

Jared Bloch of the International Organization for Migration said that with the ongoing flooding in southern Sindh, the need for emergency shelter was continuing to grow. Shelter cluster agencies and the Government were working round the clock to bring in tents, plastic sheets, blankets and other relief items. Still, it was estimated that over five million people were in desperate need of shelter and they did not yet have the sufficient capacity or resources to provide it. IOM's initial appeal to donors for $ 38 million over three months, which will be revised upwards next week, was currently 55 per cent funded. According to the Government's National Disaster Management Authority, the number of houses destroyed or damaged by the floods was now approaching 1.25 million. IOM and other relief organizations were working in southern Sindh, struggling to deliver shelter and other aid to communities cut off by flood waters and damaged roads and bridges. In Thatta district, IOM today completed a distribution of 6,000 plastic sheets, 1,800 blankets and 1,200 jerry cans to provide basic aid to 3,000 families. This followed a delivery of 500 shelter kits to the district last week. To date IOM and partner Emergency Shelter Cluster agencies had provided some 8,300 plastic sheets, 8,100 blankets, 6,600 kitchen sets and 6,600 jerry cans to flood victims in Sindh. The cluster, which was coordinated by IOM, had now provided emergency shelter and non-food relief items to some 1.2 million flood victims nationwide. Their procurement pipeline would currently meet the needs of another 2.3 million people.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

A journalist said he was still looking for answers to questions he had raised in the past concerning the abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in late July and asked for the chronology of when the senior UN officials got the details of what happened in the field. There were conflicting news reports.

In response, Ms. Momal-Vanian said her colleagues in New York did not have this information yet. She referred the journalist to the visit by the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations to the Democratic Republic of the Congo specifically for that purpose, to find out exactly what happened and when, and to analyse the response of MONUC. She did not believe they would get the detailed chronology until he returned to New York and reported to the Security Council.

UNHCR and Iraq

Adrian Edwards of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR was very concerned by ongoing forced returns of Iraqi citizens from Western European countries. On 1 September, a chartered flight with 61 people on board, manly Iraqis who had been residing in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom, landed at Baghdad airport. UNHCR had so far not been able to confirm reports that three Iranians were among those on board. UNHCR’s guidelines for Iraq asked governments not to forcibly return people originating from the governorates of Baghdad, Diyala, Kirkuk, Ninewa and Salah Al-din, in view of the serious human rights violations and continuing security incidents in these areas. UNHCR’s position was that Iraqi asylum applicants originating from these five governorates should benefit from international protection in the form of refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention or an alternative form of protection. UNHCR strongly urged European Governments to provide Iraqis with protection until the situation in their areas of origin in Iraq allowed for safe and voluntary returns.

Niger

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said more than 116,000 people had been affected by the floods in Niger. The situation of food security had been affected by the floods. More than 7,200 houses had been damaged or destroyed and nearly 5,400 hectres of planted land had been flooded. OCHA had activated a contingency plan. More than 11,000 tons of food were needed, as well as 60,000 blankets and more than 27,000 mosquito tents. There were more details in the briefing notes.

Central African Republic

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme said last week she had been telling journalists how the Central African Republic was one of their forgotten operations. At the time she said this, WFP needed $ 6.6 million by September, otherwise, it was going to have to start ration cuts to around 600,000 people there. Since then, WFP had received a generous donation from the Government of Japan for $ 2.6 million, which would allow WFP to partially maintain programmes for about two months, although they still faced very possible ration cuts beyond that. WFP thanked Japan for its generous contribution, but it still very urgently called on donors to assist it with the remainder of the needed funds.

UNAIDS

Saya Oka of UNAIDS said the results of research on the tenofovir microbicide gel were released at the International AIDS Conference in July and were seen as very promising. At that Conference, UNAIDS and WHO committed to rapidly convening a follow-up meeting. At the invitation of the South African Government last week, they convened a two-day meeting investigating follow-up steps on research. Dr. Catherine Hankins co-chaired the meeting and would brief journalists on the outcome.

Catherine Hankins, UNAIDS Chief Scientific Advisor, said the protection was 39 per cent for women over the 30-month period of the trial, and the women that were using the gel more than 80 per cent of the time to protect their sex acts had a 54 per cent protection. This was the first time ever that they had seen a positive result for a microbicide gel, which was a women-initiated and women-controlled product. The concern was how to rapidly move to make this product available to women. What was required, what was the consensus on confirmatory trials that would be needed, what was the regulatory pathway, what would the FDP say, what would the South African regulators say, what would regulators in Europe and other African countries say? The results of the meeting were a consensus that two confirmatory trials were needed, and these needed to get up and running very quickly because every day that went by without having the gel available to women would result to a new 2,500 infections a day in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of the trials would be conducted primarily in South Africa and would also include 16 and 17 year old women, because the CAPRISA trial used women aged 18 to 40 years. The second trial would be conducted primarily outside of South Africa and it would be looking at confirming the results from South Africa, getting data which would influence the regulators in those countries, but also looking at a different dosing schedule. There were more details in the press release.

Other

Catherine Sibut-Pinote of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development said UNCTAD’s 2nd World Investment Forum would be held from 6 to 9 September in Xiamen, China. Participants in the Forum would discuss how to promote sustainable investment and development in the new phase of globalization and take advantage of opportunities that could arise across the globe. Copies of the programme of the Forum were available at the back of the room.

Miss Sibut-Pinote said the annual study on investment perspectives for multinational companies would be released on Monday, 6 September. More than 200 businesses had been consulted during the study as well as more than 100 investment agencies around the world. On Tuesday, 7 September, a media alert would be sent about a study on the practices of multinational companies in the field of social responsibility of companies. On Wednesday, 8 September, a high-level Ministerial Conference co-hosted by UNCTAD and China would be held on Guidelines for Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing. An information note would be sent out after the meeting. UNCTAD’s Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi would open the Forum.

Isabelle Valentiny of the United Nations Environmental Programme said Ahmed Djoghlaf, the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, would brief the press at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 7 September in press room 1 on the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which would be held in Japan from 18 to 29
October 2010. At this Conference, governments would make three key decisions that would determine whether current and future generations continued to benefit from nature’s riches, financing, and the protocol on access and benefit sharing.

Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Organization said a press release had been sent to journalists concerning the launch of a background paper by ILO and the International Monetary Fund on the “Challenges of growth, employment and social cohesion”, which would be presented to the high-level conference on 13 September 13 in Oslo. The conference would be chaired by IMF Managing Director Dominique Stauss-Kahn and ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. She proposed holding a briefing next week on the conference.

Marco Jimenez Rodriguez of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF would be launching the findings of a study called “Progress for children achieving the Millennium Development Goals with equity”. The report presented evidence of growing disparities in the lives of children across a wide range of indicators and showed how an equity-based approach focusing on the needs of the most disadvantaged children could be a cost effective strategy to reach the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child and maternal mortality. UNICEF’s Executive Director Anthony Lake would launch the report on Tuesday, 7 September in New York.

Jared Bloch of the International Organization of Migration said at the back of the room journalists would find a joint press release from IOM, UNHCR and the Government of Tanzania regarding a conference on 6 and 7 September on mixed migration and refugee protection. The conference would highlight the growing number of individuals travelling from their home countries towards southern Africa, seeking to escape violence, persecution, drought, poverty or a combination of these. There were more details in the press release.