REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE
Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by the spokespersons for the International Labour Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, and the World Meteorological Organization.
Geneva Activities
The Committee on the Rights of the Child was today concluding a three-week session during which it considered reports by 9 countries United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Poland, Brazil, Chile, Timor-Leste, Madagascar and Cuba. The Committee was expected to issue its concluding observations and recommendations on these reports next week.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was considering a report by Sudan. Greece's report would be considered on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. That would be the last country scheduled for this session, which ends next Friday (9 October). Reports already considered: Burundi, Italy, Guyana, Iraq and Morocco.
On Friday, 2 October, at 1.15 p.m. in the press stakeout area behind Room XX, Ambassador Joachim Ruecker (Germany), President of the Human Rights Council, would brief on the Human Rights Council’s 30th regular session.
Also on Friday, 2 October, at 2 p.m. in Press Room 1, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), would brief on the 4th Session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM4). The Conference would gather ministers, industry leaders, and civil society. It was expected to adopt a resolution that guides the strategic objectives and plans over the next five critical years to minimise health and environmental risks from unsound management of chemicals, in keeping with sustainable development goals. Speakers were: Mr. Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director, Dr. Richard Lesiyampe, The Principal Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Kenya, and President of ICCM4, Mr. Cal Dooley, President and CEO of the American Chemistry Council & ICCA Council Secretary and Dr. Olga Speranskaya, International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) Co-Chair.
On Monday, 5 October, at 9.30 a.m., at the Club Suisse de la Presse, a press conference would be held on the Open Day at the Palais des Nations to celebrate the United Nations 70th anniversary. Speakers were: M. Michael Møller, Director-General of the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, Ambassador Alexandre Fasel, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations and to other international organizations in Geneva, M. François Longchamp, President of the State Council (Conseil d'Etat), Canton and Geneva Republic, Mme Esther Alder, Mayor of Geneva, M. Ivan Pictet, President of Fondation pour Genève, and M. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Italian artist and author of the sculpture "Rebirth".
The 66th Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would take place from 5 to 9 October. A session on the refugee crisis in Europe would take place on Monday. More details on the session here.
Monday, 5 October, at 2.30 p.m., in Press Room 1, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) were launching global standards to help countries to improve the quality of adolescent health care. At that press conference, experts from WHO and UNAIDS would discuss why adolescents need specific attention and how countries could make health services more accessible and suitable to their unique needs. Speakers: Dr Anthony Costello, Director of Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, WHO, Dr Valentina Baltag, expert in adolescent health, Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, WHO, and Dr Mariângela Simão, Director of Rights, Gender, Prevention & Community Mobilization, UNAIDS.
Air strikes in Syria
Asked about the silence of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria on the air strikes in that country, Mr. Fawzi explained that Mr. Staffan de Mistura was working very hard behind the scenes, with all parties -- the opposition, the government and the proxy parties involved in the conflict -- in order to get them around the table to discuss a solution. He had asked Mr. Mistura for comments.
It was not an easy task, Mr Fawzi noted. It was a crisis in all senses of the word -- humanitarian, military, security, cultural, chemical – and the largest disaster of the 21th century, he stated.
Mr. Fawzi informed that the Secretary-General had met, the day before, with Mr. Walid Al-Moualem, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Syria. The Secretary-General said that there was no military solution to the conflict and urged the government of Syria to engage constructively in the political process.
Answering a question, Mr. Fawzi confirmed that air strikes in Syria were hindering the work of humanitarian agencies and affecting the delivery of humanitarian aid. Yet, he reminded the Islamic State was the major threat of the 21st Century.
Children dying in Yemen as a result of violence and disease
Chistophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Programme (UNICEF), said that six months of unremitting violence in Yemen had left at least 505 children dead, 702 injured and more than 1.7 million at risk of malnutrition. Across the country, nearly 10 million children – 80 per cent of the country’s under-18 population – needed urgent humanitarian assistance. More than 1.4 million people had been forced to flee their homes. The recruitment and use of children had also sharply increased. It had actually quadrupled in comparison with 2014.
The escalation of the fighting had caused food insecurity to spiral and malnutrition to spike. The consequences for children were dramatic. The number of children under 5 at risk of severe acute malnutrition had tripled in 2015, with 537,000 children now at risk, compared to 160,000 children before the conflict. Finding safe water had become a daily struggle for survival for over 20.4 million people.
See the press release issued by UNICEF here.
Answering questions, Mr. Boulierac said that many children were also dying from preventable diseases in Yemen. The number of victims could rise unless basic health and vaccination was provided, he said. Today, 1.3 million children of less than five years of age were at risk of acute respiratory infections, another 2.3 million were at risk of measles. There were also 606 verified cases of children recruited by both sides of the conflict in 2015. Children were not only being hit by bombs, but were also dying in street fighting, according to Mr. Boulierac.
Mr. Boulierac confirmed that UNICEF had received 29 million US$ of unconditional funding from Saudi Arabia, based on specific needs of children across Yemen regardless of geographical location or background. Yet the agency remained underfunded. It had received US$ 60 million of the US$ 183 million it needed to provide humanitarian assistance to children in Yemen, leaving a funding gap of 67 per cent. The situation was deteriorating on a weekly basis, he warned.
Refugees in Europe on the rise, in spite of cold weather
Although windy autumn weather affected sea crossings from Turkey over the past few days, refugee and migrant arrivals in Greece continued to climb and was expected to reach the 400,000 mark shortly, said Adrian Edwards, for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Greece remained by far the largest single entry point for new sea arrivals in the Mediterranean, followed by Italy with 131,000 arrivals so far in 2015.
With the new figures from Greece, the total number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean this year was now close to the 520,957 mark. In September, 168,000 persons crossed the Mediterranean, the highest monthly figure this year and almost five times the number in September 2014.
More details in the press release issued by UNHCR here.
Asked if the situation had changed at all after the European Union announced a refugee relocation programme, Mr. Edwards said that Europe had made progress in several areas and that the funding had increased. Although these were positive steps, they were not a complete answer to the situation. Much more work needed to be done, he insisted.
A revised appeal for funding was made the day before, as the flow of refugees was expected to increase. The UNHCR was also discussing the relocation of refugees in countries outside Europe. These countries could also help by funding neighbouring countries to Syria that were receiving large numbers of refugees.
Mr. Edwards stressed that the current European refugee crisis was only one reflection of a much larger global humanitarian emergency. There were 60,000 people forcibly displaced and almost 20,000 refugees in the world. That global problem needed a global solution, he said.
Answering a question on the growing number of voices refusing to accept refugees, for fear that among them there were extremists or terrorists, Mr. Edwards said that there was no empirical evidence to prove that. He said that refugees were people fleeing fear, “and not people to be feared”.
Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that a growing number of refugees and migrants were marching and crossing into Europe by land into countries such as Bulgaria or Serbia. There were indications that registration documents given by the Greek were being copied.
He reminded that Saturday (3 October) would mark the second anniversary of the tragedy of Lampedusa (Italy), where 368 migrants, mostly from Eritrea, had perished while attempting to sail to Europe via Libya.
It was calculated that in the two years since the tragedy, another 6,584 migrants had died in the Mediterranean.
See details in the press release issued by OIM here.
Tajikistan: Increased risk of human rights violation
The Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) was concerned about an increasing risk of human rights violations connected with the recent banning of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (RPT), and the arrest and detention of more than a dozen of its members since early September, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the OHCHR.
Following the ban, at least 13 Islamic Revival Party (IRPT) members, including its leaders, were arrested and detained on 16 and 17 September. The IRPT was the only Islamic political party legally registered in Central Asia and was party to the 1997 inter-Tajik peace agreement.
Read the press release issued by the OHCHR here.
Ms. Shamdasani also informed that the High Commissioner for Human Rights would start a three-day visit to Mexico the following week and would be meeting the President of Mexico and other high-level officials. Somalia had become the latest state to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, she said.
Extremely dangerous hurricane in central Bahamas
Clare Nullis, for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), warned that an extremely dangerous category 4 (category 5 is the strongest) hurricane, Joaquin, was pounding central Bahamas. The United States National Hurricane Centre had issued various advisories – the latest on wind conditions.
A dangerous storm surge was expected to raise water levels by as much as 6 to 12 feet above normal tide levels in the central Bahamas. A storm surge of 2 to 4 feet above normal tide levels was also expected in the remainder of the Bahamas within the hurricane warning area. Near the coast, the surge would be accompanied by large and dangerous waves.
On a separate note, WMO launched a request for pictures of clouds to update their Cloud Atlas. That would help identify weather patterns.
New report on Ebola
Margaret Harris, for World Health Organisation (WHO), announced that a report on Ebola would be released by the Emergency Committee for Ebola. The Committee met the day before and was expected to publish the report in the next few days.
Launch of ILO's "Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015”
Hans Von Rohland, for the International Labour Organization, announced the launch of the "Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015" on Thursday, 8 October at 11 a.m. in Press Room 1 (under embargo until THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER at 8 p.m. GMT - 10 p.m. Geneva time). Speakers at the press conference: Azita Berar-Awad, Director of the ILO’s Employment Department and Sara Elder, lead author of the report.
The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/unog021015