REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by spokespersons and representatives of the World Meteorological Organization, the World Food Programme, the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Health Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Haiti

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the cholera appeal for Haiti was 20 per cent funded. As of today, USD 34 million out of the USD 164 million had been received from Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. United Nations agencies continued to fight the cholera epidemic in Haiti. Notably, 21 million aquatabs have been or were being distributed, and more than 1.7 million soap bars and 900,000 oral rehydration salts had been distributed.

Asked why WHO was not pushing for a massive cholera vaccination campaign in Haiti, Ms. Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said in cases of epidemics it was not recommended to conduct cholera vaccinations as the logistics would be complicated. Two vaccinations were needed within one week, and it would take one week for the immunity to become effective.

2010 almost certainly in the top three warmest years

Claire Nullis of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said yesterday in Cancun WMO released its provisional statement on the status of the global climate 2010, saying that 2010 was likely to be among the top 3 hottest years on record. Copies of the statement were available at the website in all official United Nations languages, said Ms. Nullis.

One might wonder how this was related to the currently witnessed low temperatures. According to WMO scientists, since mid-November, Western Europe and part of the Eastern United States had witnessed cold conditions. In many places this had been associated with snow falls reaching exceptional levels compared to the seasonal average. However, in many other places temperatures were well above the average. For example, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Arctic and Greenland had experienced warmer than average conditions as of 30 November this year. These extreme conditions were meteorologically linked to large disturbances that affected air pressure and wind regimes in the northern hemisphere during the end of autumn and winter. In the past two weeks, airflow had been more in North-South direction than the usual West–East direction, and this explained the drop in temperature over Europe.

When temperatures drop to freezing levels in association with the excess of moisture brought from the nearby sea (the Northern Sea or the Mediterranean), this causes excessive snowfall as recorded in several places. It was still too early to say that the long-persisting extreme conditions of last winter would be repeated, but WMO would monitor the situation during the whole winter as it evolved. National Meteorological and Hydrological Services provided operational weather analysis and forecasts for individual countries. These could be accessed via www.wmo.int or, for Europe more specifically, at http://www.meteoalarm.eu, which gives a snapshot of weather conditions in Europe.

Increasing Numbers of Stranded Migrants Dying on Yemeni-Saudi Border

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said there had been increasing numbers of irregular migrants stranded on Yemen's border with Saudi Arabia in need of humanitarian assistance. In mid-November, IOM had been told that about 19 migrants had died from various illnesses and injuries. Since then, another 13 migrants had died, bringing the total of migrant deaths there to 30 in the past few weeks.

In mid-November, of all those migrants referred to IOM for assistance, 32 per cent had been deportees and 39 per cent had returned from the border. Now, 65 per cent of the referrals were deportees and only 20 per cent of them returnees from the border.

The migrants had been living out in the open, had no money, paper or food, and were often severely dehydrated. Every day, between 15 and 25 migrants were being referred to Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) for treatment, mainly for malaria, TB, typhoid or malnutrition, said Ms. Pandya.

IOM and partners, including the United Nations, had been working to help an initial group of 2,000 Ethiopian irregular migrants. Since November 13, IOM has assisted 785 of the migrants to voluntarily return home after providing medical, shelter and food assistance. By 6 December, the Organization would have assisted 1032 out of the targeted 2,000 migrants. This included a group of 154 Ethiopian women and minors who had been held in Yemeni detention centres simply because they were irregular migrants. To assist the remaining migrants, IOM had appealed for USD 1 million to help the remaining migrants. Unfortunately, to date IOM had not received any response.

There was a dramatic increase in migrants needing help. Over the past week, the number of migrants being referred to IOM had jumped to about 76 a day. UNHCR had been registering the migrants to date, and they had now registered an additional 800 migrants altogether in the past few weeks.

IOM, with funds from the Central Emergency Response Fund, was setting up a basic infrastructure in Haradh to accommodate approximately 200 migrants and provide them with food, shelter and medical assistance, said Ms. Pandya. This would be the main gathering point from which the migrants would be taken by IOM to Sana’a before making the final journey home to Ethiopia. This project was conducted in a joint effort by United Nations agencies, Doctors without Borders and IOM's local partner, Charitable Society for Social Welfare.

Emergency shelter completed in southern Kyrgyzstan, focus turns to protection and peace-building

Adrian Edwards of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said UNHCR had this week wrapped up its emergency shelter programme in southern Kyrgyzstan, providing temporary homes for all of the more than 13,400 people whose houses had been damaged or destroyed during June’s violence. Getting people into proper accommodation before the winter had been an important goal. June’s violence had cost the lives of over 400 people, and displaced 375,000 others -- 75,000 of them briefly into neighbouring Uzbekistan.

Now that this emergency shelter work was completed, the focus of UNHCR would shift to reconciliation, in particular promoting the rule of law and human rights. The situation in this part of Kyrgyzstan remained fragile. In all, some 2,000 homes had been repaired or rebuilt over the past 100 days, of which almost 1,700 had been completely destroyed. Early completion of this programme had been important. In UNHCR’s view, this owed much to the commitment and coordination there with partner organizations, as well as the support of the Kyrgyz President, government and authorities. UNHCR itself had constructed four out of every five of these transitional homes. With shelters built and people moved in, UNHCR would continue helping with the restoration of documents and housing, land and property rights, said Mr. Edwards.

Life A Bitter Struggle for Displaced Iraqi Female Heads of Households Returning Home, IOM study finds

Ms. Pandya said food, lack of work and health care remained the major obstacles to recovery among displaced Iraqi female heads of households who have returned home. In its latest survey on displacement in Iraq, with a special focus on female-headed households, IOM had assessed 1,355 displaced families headed by a woman which have returned to their former homes.

Although these families had valid public distribution cards giving them access to food rations, 74 percent of them were struggling to provide adequate nutrition to family members. The problem was further compounded when rations arrived late or incomplete. The women were forced to spend what meagre funds they had on buying food.

The lack of access to health care reported among those surveyed was another cause for concern. Just over 25 percent of the families surveyed had a member with a chronic disease while one in four was without any access to health care. With many of the families dependent on open or broken pipes, rivers or streams or other unsafe sources for water supplies, it seriously increased the risk of their contracting waterborne diseases, Ms. Pandya said.

In addition, female-heads of households were under enormous psychological and social stress. Those who were married or divorced had often had to flee domestic violence, which had greatly increased in the last five years as the country suffered one of the biggest displacement crises in recent history. Across the country, one in five Iraqi women were subjected to physical violence and even more, 1 in 3, to emotional violence. This had underlined the need for psycho-social support and legal aid for female heads of households to ensure their physical and mental security.

New Chapter in the IRIN Short Film Series “Heroes of HIV”

Ms. Byrs announced the launch of the latest chapter in IRIN ongoing series of short films entitled “Heroes of HIV”. The chapter told the story of a 70-year-old transgender sex worker who had been working the streets of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh before working on sensitization campaigns targeting school children. More information was available in the note at the back of the room.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers would today conclude its thirteenth session, making public its concluding observations on the three country reports examined during this session, namely Albania, Ecuador and Senegal. The Committee would perhaps also adopt its general comment on migrant domestic workers. (It was later announced that the general comment had been adopted.)

The State parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction -- also referred to as the Biological Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1975 -- would meet from 6-10 December at the Palais des Nations. During this meeting, presided over by Chilean Ambassador Pedro Oyarce, State parties would notably discuss how to respond to cases of alleged uses of biological and toxin weapons. The Director-General of UNOG, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, would address the opening session.

The World Health Organization would hold a press conference on the cholera situation in Haiti, to take place today at 11.30 a.m. in Room III, Ms. Momal-Vanian said. Later this afternoon, at 4.30 p.m. in Room III, a press conference would take place on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. Speaking would notably be Ambassador Jürg Lauber of Switzerland, the host country, and Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch.

Ms. Momal-Vanian reminded journalists of the launch, this morning in Helsinki, of the UNICEF report on inequality in child well-being in the world’s rich countries. The report, entitled “The Children Left Behind,” measured the extent of inequality in 24 OECD countries. Copies of the report were available at the back of the room and interviews with the authors of the report could be arranged by Marixie Mercado of UNICEF.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) would release its Rural Poverty Report on Monday 6 December. The report, published every ten years, provided updated estimates on poverty rates and trends in rural areas of developing countries. It also included first-hand accounts from rural people regarding the challenges and risks they faced in their everyday lives. The report would be officially launched at a press conference in London, at 11:00 GMT on Monday, but IFAD would be tweeting live from the press conference (at hash-tag #rpr2011) and a website for journalists to download the report on Monday had been set up (http://www.ifad.org/rpr2011). Contacts for media inquiries: Mr. David St. John: d.stjohn@ifad.org, tel + 1 315 396 9590.

WFP Agenda

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme (WFP) said 2010 had been a year with many climate-related emergencies, notably the Sahel drought, hurricanes passing near Haiti and the floods in Pakistan, Myanmar and Burkina Faso. By 2015, the number of people affected by climate-related disasters was expected to reach about 375 million a year, and by 2020 some countries might see their agricultural yields halved by climate emergencies.

Ms. Casella said WFP was working with partners to help people prepare for weather emergencies and avoid risks as much as possible. The WFP was notably working with WMO and the United Kingdom Met Office to put together detailed climate data with detailed food insecurity analyses for countries to pinpoint the areas that were most at risk, where climate emergencies would overlap with food emergencies. This could help authorities prepare for, and hopefully prevent, the worst impacts in terms of food insecurity. As part of these efforts, WFP today released a Food Insecurity and Climate Change map to give a visual representation of what WFP offered to governments that may not have detailed data. Copies of the map were available at the back of the room.

WFP had also been working with WMO on weather risk insurance, collecting data from weather stations in specific countries to look at expected agricultural yields based on weather data. This kind of insurance would provide small farmers with a payout if their crops failed due to weather emergencies. Weather risk insurance was much more effective than giving people food after weather emergencies; if they could receive insurance against the loss of their crops, they could feed their families, or at least prepare for the next year’s planting season. The WFP and Oxfam would make an announcement on this topic tomorrow at the Cancun climate conference.

WTO Agenda

Janaina Borges of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said the Agriculture Negotiations Committee would meet on Monday at 3 p.m. (to be confirmed) and the Rules Negotiating Group would convene on Wednesday and Friday, 8 and 10 December. Intellectual property negotiations would take place on Friday while Russia membership negotiations, in the form of informal chair consultation on the process, were being held on Wednesday 8 December.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn would be participating at the Geneva Lecture Series, to take place on Wednesday 8 December at 4.30 p.m. at the Assembly Hall. On Thursday, Mr. Lamy would present the annual overview of developments in the trading system to the Trade Policy Review Body. The report that would be presented and discussed from 9.30 a.m. onwards was accessible for journalists on the WTO website. Full schedules including contact details for further information were available in the press room.

WIPO Agenda

Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore would meet next week. The meeting would start off with a public discussion on the public domain with regards to indigenous groups, which journalists were welcome to attend, Ms. Shamoon said. She added that more information was available on the website.

WHO Agenda

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan would be in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Monday 6 December to launch a new meningitis A vaccine. The opening ceremony would take place in the morning and see the participation of national authorities, including the Minister of Health of Burkina Faso. A press conference would be held in the afternoon. An (embargoed) press release would be made available to the Geneva press corps this afternoon or early Monday morning, Ms. Chaib said. She added that the World Malaria Report 2010 would be launched on Tuesday 14 December, saying more details would follow.

In response to a question, Ms. Chaib said the vaccine cost less than 50 cents per dose. The project was a partnership between PATH, WHO, the Research Council of Norway and the Fondation Merieux, with grants from the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.

Glenn Thomas, Communications Officer at WHO's Tuberculosis Department, said WHO would give a press conference on a new rapid diagnostic test for TB, MDR-TB and TB/HIV at 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday 7 December. Speaking would be Dr. Jorge Sampaio, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis, Dr. Mario Raviglione, Director at WHO's Stop TB Department, Dr. Karin Weyer, Coordinator, TB Diagnostics and Laboratory Strengthening, at WHO's Stop TB Department, and Dr. Giorgio Roscigno, Chief Executive Officer, Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics. The press conference was embargoed until 11.30 a.m. Wednesday 8 December 2010 Geneva time (the official announcement was to take place in London the day after the Geneva-based press conference). Ahead of this press conference, about 100 experts had met in Geneva to explore the issues around the rapid tuberculosis test, to assess how effective it would be in different countries and to explore how WHO could help with the new test in the countries most affected by tuberculosis.