REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Michele Zaccheo, Chief, Radio and Television Section, United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Organization for Migration, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Geneva activities

Human Rights Council

Rolando Gomez for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that the Human Rights Council was holding on 15 March in the morning (from 9 a.m. to noon) its interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria. The Commission had presented its 11^th report to the Council. It had been followed by a statement from the Syrian Ambassador, and a summary of that statement would be circulated to the press shortly, along with some comments in response to that statement from the Commission’s Chairman, Paulo Pinheiro. Regarding the fifth anniversary of the start of the conflict, Mr. Pinheiro had said, “Five long years had passed since war in Syria started. The toll that this conflict has taken on the Syrian people goes far beyond anything that we could have imagined when the uprising began in 2011”. Many speakers at the Council had emphasized the importance of the talks currently underway, and the need for a political solution.

The Council would then examine the OHCHR report on DPRK and an oral update on Eritrea, before holding a General debate on “Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention” (item 4 of the Agenda).

Mr. Gomez said that the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, who would be speaking to the press on 15 March at 11:30 a.m., followed the historic elections held in November 2015, and her presentation at the Council on 14 March had occurred two weeks before the new Government was set to take power in Myanmar. Finally, Mr. Gomez said that the deadline for the submission of draft resolutions was 16 March, and that 40 resolutions were expected to be considered in the week of 21 March.

Conference on Disarmament and Committees

Mr. Zaccheo said that the Conference on Disarmament (CD) was holding a public meeting on 15 March at 10 a.m. The CD was currently under the Presidency of Norway (ending on 20 March). After Nigeria and Norway, the CD would be successively chaired by Pakistan, Peru, Poland and the Republic of Korea.

The Human Rights Committee was achieving on 15 March in the morning its review of the report of New Zealand, begun on 15 March. In the afternoon of 15 March, the Committee would begin its review of the report of Slovenia. Other countries whose reports were to be reviewed during the week were Costa Rica and Rwanda.

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances would be meeting in private in the week of March 14. It would close its tenth session on 18 March by issuing its concluding observations on the three countries whose reports had been reviewed during the two-week session: Tunisia, Burkina Faso and Kazakhstan.


Press conferences and other announcements

Mr. Zaccheo said that on 15 March at 11:30 a.m. in Room III, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) would hold a press conference with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee.

Mr. Zaccheo also announced a stakeout of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic on 15 March at 2 p.m. in Hall XIV. Later in the afternoon, a stakeout could be expected at the same location following the Special Envoy’s meeting with the Syrian opposition, in addition to possible stakeouts in the outdoor area by Door 21, which were not official UN stakeouts.

Edward Harris, for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), announced a press conference on 16 March at 11 a.m. in Press Room 1, on the release of WIPO’s annual report for 2015 on international applications for patents, trademark and industrial designs, with Francis Gurry, WIPO Director General, and Mosahid Khan, WIPO Head of IP Statistics. Materials would be circulated under embargo on 15 March.

Another set of data, on domain cybersquatting cases handled by WIPO in 2015, under embargo until 00h01 on 18 March, would be circulated on 15 March, in the context of a new set of top-level domain names joining .com, .org etc. WIPO Director General Gurry would take questions on this topic also at the 16 March press conference, joined by Erik Wilbers, Director, WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre.

Syria

Ahmad Fawzi, for the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria (OSE), reminded the press of the fifth anniversary of the start of the Syrian conflict, which was today. The cessation of hostilities on Syria had been holding, by-and-large, for 18 days, and combined with humanitarian deliveries across Syria, had allowed to save lives. Mr. Fawzi announced that on 16 March, convoys would go into a hard-to-reach area in rural Damascus, Bloudan. On 17 March, convoys would go into the four besieged towns of Foah, Kefraya, Zabadani and Madaya.

In response to a question, Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that a convoy had been expected to enter the four besieged towns on 14 March and had been unable to proceed because of security concerns. According to the agreement in place, the convoys to the four towns had to be simultaneous and if one of them could not proceed, the whole operation had to come to a stop. The current plans were for a convoy to enter Bloudan in rural Damascus on 16 March, and for a retry for a convoy to the four towns on 17 March.

Mr. Laerke also said that the convoy scheduled for Bloudan would be the first since 7 March. The distinction between hard-to-reach areas and besieged areas was that once a place was besieged, no aid could come in, and no-one could come out. It was a sustained inability to reach people with aid. The hard-to-reach areas were areas with no sustained access for a routine operation. In addition to the efforts targeting those areas, there was a full-blown operation across Syria, to all the areas which were accessible.

Mr. Fawzi said that the Intra-Syria talks had started on 14 March, with a two-hour meeting between Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and the representative of the Syrian Government, Ambassador Jaafari. The Special Envoy then had attended a meeting of the cease-fire taskforce, co-chaired by the United States and the Russian Federation. On the evening of 14 March, the Special Envoy had briefed the Security Council from Geneva, offering a progress report on the talks and the work of the taskforces. While entering the briefing room, he had been informed of the announcement of the Russian Federation regarding the retreat of Russian troops.

On this topic, Staffan de Mistura had said, “The announcement by President Putin on the very day of the beginning of this round of Intra-Syrian talks in Geneva is a significant development, which we hope will have a positive impact on the progress of the negotiations in Geneva aimed at achieving a political solution of the Syrian conflict, and a peaceful political transition in the country.”

The Special Envoy would be meeting with the Syrian opposition (High Negotiating Committee delegation) in the afternoon of 15 March. Exact times of meetings would be announced one hour beforehand, as a rule. On 16 March would take place a meeting between the Special Envoy and the Government of Syria, and on 17 March meetings of the two taskforces.

In response to a question, Mr. Fawzi underlined that the meetings of the taskforces were extremely productive and impressive. The work of the humanitarian taskforce showed the determination of the ISSG and of the international community to overcome all obstacles to deliver much-needed assistance to the Syrian people. The Munich momentum was producing results, with the co-chairs cooperating in making the cessation of hostilities work, communicating quickly and clearly whenever an incident materialized, and coordinating their influence on the parties on the ground.

Malawi/ Mozambique

Leo Dobbs, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said that UNHCR welcomed a decision by the Malawian government to reopen a former refugee camp to help cope with the rising numbers of people fleeing Mozambique. Close to 10,000 refugees had now been registered in southern Malawi since mid-December. Most of the new arrivals were located in a single village, close to the border, Kapise, and others were scattered throughout the neighbouring district of Chikwawa. To date, 9,600 people had been registered by UNHCR staff and government workers, but others were waiting to be registered and the total including those was almost 11,500. Daily arrival rates in Malawi had been growing, from around 130 people a day before late February, to around 250 people every day in Kapise in mid-March. Mozambicans who had arrived earlier in the year had spoken of having fled deadly attacks on their villages. More recent arrivals had said they had been fleeing for preventive reasons, out of fear of clashes between Government forces and RENAMO, the main opposition group, which was aiming to take control of six northern provinces (Manica, Sofala, Tete, Zambezia, Nampula and Niassa).

The Malawi Government’s decision to reopen the Luwani refugee camp, which had been in operation during the civil war, would enable to provide more basic services, and better security. While Kapise was just five kilometres from the border, Luwani was located some 65 kilometres inside Malawi. Luwani had more than 160 hectares of space, including forest. Refugees would have better facilities and services there, including health, education, water and protection. While appreciating Malawi’s generosity in hosting so many people, UNHCR was reiterating the importance of keeping doors open to people fleeing danger.

Lack of funding for UNHCR and others was a problem. Some USD 1.8 million was needed to meet immediate needs, but more would be needed to cope with the growing number of arrivals. Malawi was one of the poorest countries in the world, but was showing an example in hosting so many people in need from Mozambique.

In response to a question, Mr. Dobbs said that UNHCR was dealing with present-day needs and was hoping the conflict in Mozambique would not become prolonged, as it had been the case with the previous conflict.

Zimbabwe

Christophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that Zimbabwe was facing its worst malnutrition rates in 15 years, as nearly 33,000 children were in urgent need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition. The number of hungry families in the country had doubled in the last eight months. Families in rural Zimbabwe were locked in a struggle for survival after two consecutive seasons of failed rains, attributed to the El Niño weather phenomenon. Those seasons of failed rains had diminished food harvests and reserves, increased hunger and malnutrition, dried up water sources and decimated livestock. According to the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Survey released in February, nearly 2.8 million people in rural Zimbabwe (30 per cent of the rural population) would require food assistance, of which 1.4 million were children. As often, children were enduring the greatest force of the crisis. Overall, 2.1 per cent of children under five years old in Zimbabwe had severe acute malnutrition, the international threshold required for an emergency response being 2 per cent. The majority of children with severe acute malnutrition were aged between one and two years.

As ever in a crisis of this nature, children faced increased risks of child labor, early marriage and violence. There were reports of physical and sexual violence, teen pregnancies and child marriage, which could sometimes become a coping mechanism in such crisis situations. There were also risks of disease arising from the lack of access to safe water.

In response to a question, Mr. Boulierac said that the Government of Zimbabwe had declared a state of disaster and had launched an appeal for USD 1.5 billion, but it was not known how much of that sum had been raised. UNICEF was appealing for USD 21 million, out of which so far USD 430,000 had been mobilized. Mr. Boulierac reiterated that UNICEF was very concerned about children’s lives given the situation of severe acute malnutrition. In 2015, UNICEF had treated more than 14000 children under-five for Severe Acute malnutrition nationally and given access to more than 38,000 people to safe water, especially through the drilling and rehabilitation of boreholes.

El Niño/ Ethiopia

Jens Laerke, for the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that El Nino was wreaking havoc in Ethiopia, where a very severe drought had been developing. Its humanitarian impact seemed to be much wider and deeper than it had been anticipated when OCHA’s response plan with the Government had been launched in December 2015. A joint appeal requesting USD 1.4 billion to help 10.2 million people affected by the drought had been launched at that time, and currently the appeal was funded at about 48 per cent. Consequences of the drought included increasing food insecurity, malnutrition and water shortages.

A coordinated response was on the way, with targeted supplementary feeding for malnourished people. Spikes of increased malnutrition, worse than anticipated, were seen in several parts of the country. This coincided with the start of the traditional hunger gap, the period between harvests, in April and May, in Ethiopia. Among the more than 12 million people in need, there were 2.2 million moderately malnourished children under five years of age, and about 450,000 severely malnourished children requiring immediate intervention. There were also 3.3 million smallholder farmers who urgently needed seeds in order to secure food.

The Government’s national disaster risk management commission had been receiving ad hoc requests from various parts of the country for more assistance, including from areas which had not originally been part of the response plan, which needed to be reviewed. the original response plan. This plan had to be reviewed. The process of increased assessments would be completed within a few weeks’ time.

Yemen

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that IOM was relaunching evacuations of vulnerable Ethiopian migrants from Yemen, with 250 scheduled to leave on 15 March in the morning. He said that this was a resumption of evacuations that had had to be suspended in September. It was not sure how many detained or vulnerable migrants were present in the country, estimates could run as high as 80,000.

Cuba

IOM concluded its work on 14 March with a final group of Cuban migrants that had been stranded in Costa Rica. Many of the 7,800 migrants had been able to get transit visas from Costa Rica authorities to fly to Mexico because a successful program that had been agreed upon by the Governments of the region had eliminated the need for the migrants to seek criminal groups to help move them through the Isthmus. IOM in Costa Rica said that at least 600 migrants had requested assistance in two points on the Panama-Costa Rica border. The emergency was not finished but most of the migrants that had been in different shelters in Costa Rica had been able to fly out of the country to Mexico and to the United States.

Mediterranean arrivals

Mr. Millman said that 152,697 refugees and migrants had crossed into the Greek islands or Italy over the past two and a half months. He added that the number of deaths had reached 456 since the beginning of January 2016, with some unconfirmed reports on 15 March of eight more drownings. Three Afghan nationals had drowned at a river crossing into the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on 14 March. Mr. Millman indicated that the one millionth migrant to enter Greece by sea since 1 January 2015 would be arriving on 15 or 16 March (that total was currently at 996,855).

The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/unog150316