REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ahmad Fawzi, Director, a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Organization for Migration, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Refugee Agency.

UN Secretary-General and UNOG Director-General

Mr. Fawzi said that on 9 May, the Secretary-General had been in Mauritius. He had visited several World Heritage Sites and had attended the Congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration.

UNOG Director-General Michael Møller would be awarded a Medal of Honor called “Genève Reconnaissante” by the City of Geneva on 12 May in Palais Eynard, at 6 p.m. The medal, awarded annually to those who promoted the quality of life and the values of the City. It would be presented to Mr. Møller by the Mayor of Geneva, Esther Alder.

Geneva activities

Committees
The Committee against Torture would meet in private at Palais Wilson until the end of its 57th session on 13 May, except for a public meeting on 10 May at 3 p.m. on the follow-up of articles 19 and 22 of the Convention against torture.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Palais Wilson, Ground floor) would meet in private before ending its 89th session on 13 May.

The Universal Periodic Review Working Group was examining the human rights record of Swaziland in the morning of 10 May, and would review Trinidad and Tobago in the afternoon. The Working Group was also scheduled to adopt its reports for Sudan and Hungary at 1 p.m. today. On 11 May, it would review Thailand at 9 a.m. and Ireland in the afternoon.

Press conferences and other announcements
Christian Lindmeier, for the World Health Organization (WHO), announced a press conference on 10 May at 3 p.m. in Room III, on the Yellow Fever outbreak in Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo, by Dr. Sylvie Briand, the Director of Pandemic and Endemic Diseases of the WHO.

On 11 May, WHO would release its third global urban ambient air pollution database comprising of 3,000 cities in 103 countries, at a press conference at 2 p.m. in Room III. The database highlighted air pollution levels and trends, and showed where air pollution levels and related health risks were highest.

On 12 May at 10:30 a.m. in Press Room 1 would take place a WHO briefing on new recommendations on faster diagnosis and shorter, cheaper treatment for patients with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB).

On 13 May at 1 p.m., WHO would hold an embargoed press briefing on new recommendations regarding treatment of women and girls living with female genital mutilation.

Currently ongoing was the WHO-FAO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR Meeting) on international risk assessment on pesticide residues in food. The results of the JMPR, which was a meeting of independent experts, would be a series of recommendations which would then go to the FAO-WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission. The Commission would then decide on any further actions. The meeting would finish on 13 May and a virtual press conference might be held afterwards, to be confirmed on 11 May.

On 17 May, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan would brief the press ahead of the upcoming World Health Assembly, which would open on 23 May.

Syria

In response to questions, Mr. Fawzi said that the Special Envoy for Syria was always hopeful that the parties would come back to the table for talks soon. It had been reported that an ISSG meeting would take place on 17 May; this would have to be confirmed by the ISSG co-chairs, Russia and the United States. Such a meeting would be a positive sign, as was the 9 May statement by Russia and the United States. Mr. Fawzi also said that he would get back later to the press with more information in regards to the stakeout location for when the talks would resume. The Special Envoy was working very hard with the co-chairs and the members of the ISSG to revive the cessation of hostilities so that the talks could resume in an environment conducive to progress on the political transition.

Turkey

Rupert Colville, for the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), said that more and more information had been emerging from a variety of credible sources about the actions of security forces in the town of Cizre in south-east Turkey during the extended curfew there from mid-December 2015 until early March 2016. The picture that had been emerging, although still sketchy, was extremely alarming. The High Commissioner strongly condemned violence and other unlawful acts committed by the youth groups and other non-state agents, allegedly affiliated with the PKK , in Cizre and other areas, and regretted any loss of life as a result of terrorist acts wherever they had occurred. However, while Turkey had a duty to protect its population from acts of violence, it was essential that the authorities respected human rights at all times while undertaking security or counter-terrorism operations – and international law prohibiting torture, extrajudicial killings, disproportionate use of lethal force and arbitrary detention should be observed.

The High Commissioner had received reports of unarmed civilians – including women and children – being deliberately shot by snipers, or by gunfire from tanks and other military vehicles. There also appeared to have been massive, and seemingly highly disproportionate, destruction of property and key communal infrastructure – including buildings hit by mortar or shellfire, and damage inflicted on the contents of individual apartments and houses taken over by security forces in Cizre. There were also allegations of arbitrary arrests, and of torture and other forms of ill-treatment, as well as reports that in some situations ambulances and medical staff had been prevented from reaching the wounded. On top of that, there had been huge displacement triggered by the curfews and by subsequent fighting, shelling, killings and arrests in many places in the south-east of Turkey.

Most disturbing of all were the reports quoting witnesses and relatives in Cizre which suggested that more than 100 people had been burned to death as they had sheltered in three different basements that had been surrounded by security forces. All those allegations, including those levelled at the groups fighting against the security forces, were extremely serious and should be thoroughly investigated, but did not appear to have been so far. The Turkish Government had not responded positively to requests by OHCHR and other parts of the United Nations to visit the region to collect information first-hand. More information had emerged from Cizre compared to other districts, towns and villages in the south-east – including Silopi, Nusaybin and the Sur district of Diyarbakýr, the main city in the region – which had been sealed off for weeks on end, and were still next to impossible to access, because of the heavy security presence. In 2016, to have such a lack of information about what was happening in such a large and geographically accessible area was both extraordinary and deeply worrying. The black-out simply fueled suspicions about what had been going on. The High Commissioner renewed his call for access for UN staff and other impartial observers and investigators, including civil society organizations and journalists.

In response to a question, Mr. Colville said that the Turkish Government had not outright refused a visit by OHCHR but had not made it possible to happen so far. Regarding an earlier incident, referred to by a 1 February OHCHR press release, and captured on video in Cizre by a journalist who had been arrested: OHCHR had called for his release, and he had indeed been released. The Government had not disputed that the incident had taken place. However, today, the focus was on a much broader picture.

Afghanistan

Mr. Colville said that OHCHR regretted the execution of six people on 8 May in Afghanistan, amid persisting serious concerns about compliance with fair trial standards, and reports about the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment as a means of extracting confessions. OHCHR feared that there could be more executions in the near future.

International law required that the death penalty may only be carried out in line with a final judgement rendered by a competent court after a legal process with all possible safeguards to ensure a fair trial, including legal representation and the right to appeal to a court of higher jurisdiction. The Government of Afghanistan had publicly stated that, based on its review, all fair trial rights had been respected in these cases. But, the criteria and methodology used in this review had not been made public and the review lacked transparency. Given the lack of transparency and substantial concerns about compliance with fair trial rights in other cases, serious doubts about Afghanistan’s compliance with international law remained.

While recognizing the increasing security challenges faced by the authorities and growing public pressure to reduce the violence, OHCHR stressed, once again, that there was no evidence to confirm that the death penalty was a stronger deterrent than other forms of punishment. OHCHR urged the President to refrain from approving death sentences and to immediately introduce an official moratorium on the use of death penalty. OHCHR also urged the Afghan authorities to expedite legal reform, including of the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code, to allow for death sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment.

Migrants/refugees

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that IOM was providing services to 1,064 newly arrived displaced families in Libya, in the Bani Waleed district. IOM had worked with an NGO partner, Al-Salam, to distribute aid funded by an operation by the Government of Korea. IOM was hoping that this would be the start of much more active engagement in Libya, which had been the main source of migrants entering Europe through the Mediterranean in 2016..

Since the beginning of 2016, deaths in the Mediterranean were at 1,357 and arrivals were at 187,631, which was 2,800 more than reported on 6 May. All but 99 of the arrivals over the past five days had arrived in Italy. Greece had received over 155,000 migrants in 2016, but all but 4,000 of those had arrived before 1 April. Through the month of April and into May, arrivals in Greece had slowed significantly although the traffic had not stopped completely. Some 31,141 migrants had arrived by sea in Italy in 2016.

In response to questions, Mr. Millman said that only very small numbers of Syrians had been recorded in Mali and in Mauretania. The three majors groups having come through Greece via the eastern Mediterranean route – Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans – were practically not represented on the central Mediterranean route. Sub-Saharan Africans totalled over 20,000 of the 22,621 migrants arriving in Italy through April 30. There was reason to believe that the remaining 2,000 were also from African countries, such as for example Togo. As of now there were no signs of the former eastern Mediterranean traffic being diverted to the central Mediterranean, but as it was a long journey, those signs could be taking time to appear. He also said that the central Mediterranean traffic observed in 2016 was consistent with 2015 numbers. The Sub-Saharan African migrants tended to be divided into two groups: longstanding employees in Libya having grown wary of the security situation in the country, and workers kidnapped in Libya, forced to pay ransom and to get on boats under threat. IOM did not think of them in 100 per cent of the cases as willing migrants trying to make their way into Europe. In terms of nationalities, there were four times as many migrants from Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea as in 2015 and double the number of migrants from Nigeria. However, the order of magnitude by nationality remained the same.

In response to questions, William Spindler for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) confirmed that there had been an incident at the border between Slovakia and Hungary, where four cars carrying 11 refugees or migrants refugees had been stopped at the border. One of the cars had tried to drive on and Slovakian Finance and Customs police shot at the car. A 25-year-old woman from Syria had been shot in the back; she was currently in a stable condition in the intensive care unit of the hospital in Dunajska Streda, and UNHCR would try to visit her once she was out of intensive care. The persons on board were being smuggled. With Governments trying to restrict entry, such incidents occurred from time to time. It was unfortunate that people fleeing war and violence were victimized in that way.

Zika

In response to questions, Mr. Lindmeier said that effective vector control was essential during the Olympics and the WHO was confident that the Brazilian authorities, together with the International Olympic Committee, were doing their best in that field. But on top of that, for every individual traveller going to the Olympic Games, personal protection measures were also essential, and included the use of insect repellent, sleeping indoors with a mosquito net and using air conditioning instead of opening windows, or window screens. Pregnant women were recommended to consult with their health care providers. Travellers coming back from Brazil were recommended to practice safe sex for the following four to six weeks if in suspicion of having been bitten by a Zika-carrying mosquito. In short, personal protection, prevention measures on the ground by the authorities and organizers, and vigilance upon return were key, although almost 80 per cent of people did not show any symptoms. Mr. Lindmeier also reiterated the fact that Zika was still a disease that the world was learning about.

In response to another question, Mr. Lindmeier said that individual Zika cases were not being counted as it was impossible to keep track of all cases of mosquito bites. Regarding microcephaly cases, the count in Brazil had been at 1,271 by 5 May. In Colombia, there had been 7 reported cases, 3 in Cabo Verde, 8 in French Polynesia, 2 in Martinique, 4 in Panama, 1 in Slovenia, 2 in the United States.

World Health Assembly

In response to a question, Mr. Lindmeier said that since 2009, the two sides across from the Taiwan Strait had agreed on Chinese Taipei’s participation in the World Health assembly. WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan had invited the Department of Health in Chinese Taipei to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer. That annual invitation had to be repeated each year according to the agreement between the two parties.