REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE
Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which provided information about Geneva meetings and activities, World Environment Day, human rights and other issues. Spokespersons for The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Children's Fund, the International Labour Office, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Programme and the International Organization for Migration participated in the briefing.
Meetings and Activities in Geneva
Mrs. Heuzé said the Committee on the Rights of the Child would be concluding its session on Friday, 3 June. On Monday, 30 May, the Committee reviewed the third periodic report of Costa Rica and on Wednesday, 1 June, it would take up the third periodic report of Yemen. The final observations and recommendations of the Committee on the reports of Saint Lucia, the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Ecuador, Norway, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Yemen, which were considered this session, would be released on 3 June.
The International Law Commission would be finishing the first part of its annual meeting on Friday, 3 June. The Commission was meeting in Salle XXI.
The Working Group on minorities was meeting in Salle XXVI from Monday, 30 May, to Friday, 3 June. Copies of the provisional agenda of the Working Group were available at the back of the room.
The second part of the 2005 annual session of the Conference on Disarmament started on Monday, 30 May. The first plenary would be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 2 June. So far, there were no speakers. The plenary would be held under the Presidency of Ambassador Joseph Ayalogu of Nigeria.
The ninety-third International Labour Conference was today starting at the Palais des Nations. It would conclude its work on 16 June.
Mrs. Heuzé recalled that the International Day of UN Peacekeepers was commemorated on 29 May. A ceremony to mark this Day would be held this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in the Ariana Park. The Director-General of UNOG, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, would place a wreath in honour of peacekeepers who had lost their lives. The message of the Secretary-General on this occasion was available in the press room. In 2004, 115 peacekeepers had been killed, and so far in 2005, 35 peacekeepers had been killed.
In conclusion, the Director said that as journalists had been interested in the public meeting that was held at the Palais des Nations on Monday, 30 May between 1990 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev and representatives of the Permanent Missions to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Specialized Agencies in Geneva, she wanted to draw their attention to a similar event. A round table with Mr. Gorbachev entitled "the meeting which completely changed the world" would be held at Uni Mail at 8 p.m. tonight. Other participants included Alexander Bessmertnikh, the former Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union; Robert McFarlane, the former National Security Advisor to President Reagan; Edouard Brunner, the former Secretary of State of Switzerland and the former Ambassador of Switzerland to the United States; and Jack Matlock, the former Ambassador of the United States to the Soviet Union. Mr. Ordzhonikidze would be speaking at the beginning of the round table. More details on the round table were available in the press room.
Question
A journalist asked where he could find more figures concerning the UN peacekeepers. Mrs. Heuzé said that the figures she had quoted and others were mentioned in the message of the Secretary-General on the International Day of UN Peacekeepers which was available in the press room. Also available was a background note with more information.
Human Rights
José Luis Díaz, Spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said he would shortly send to journalists a statement from High Commissioner Louise Arbour in which she expressed serious concern over the arrest yesterday in Khartoum, Sudan, of the country head of the Dutch section of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) over a March report on rape in the Darfur region of the country. "This is a very disturbing development", the High Commissioner said. "Rape and sexual violence are very real features of the life of the women of Darfur. This is the conclusion of our monitors, of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and of all serious investigations into the unfolding human rights crisis in the region. MSF has done nothing more than record these horrendous crimes and try to focus critically needed attention on them". The High Commissioner called on the Government of Sudan to ensure that human rights and humanitarian workers are permitted to work freely and without fear of retaliation.
In a related development which Mr. Díaz said he had just heard, the MSF coordinator in Darfur had also been arrested in Nyala. He had no more information on the charges against that MSF staffer, but in the current context, the Office of the High Commissioner would also be closely following his situation.
World Environment Day
Michael Williams of the United Nations Environment Programme said that on the occasion of World Environment Day, UNEP would be launching its new "Atlas of our Changing Environment". The Atlas was embargoed until 2 p.m. on Saturday, 4 June. The main launch would be held in London, but UNEP was organizing a simultaneous launch in Geneva in French at the Palais at 2 p.m. on Friday, 3 June, embargoed until Saturday, 4 June.
Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization asked if journalists were interested in a briefing on a joint WHO-UNICEF report entitled "Water for Life, Making it Happen" which was being released on the occasion of World Environment Day which was commemorated on 5 June. It was agreed that journalists interested in the report could contact WHO for individual interviews.
Violence against children
Angela Hawke of the United Nations Children's Fund said that available was a press release and a background paper based on research gathered by UNICEF in the run-up to a major conference on violence against children which showed that violence against children in residential institutions could be found across Europe and Central Asia. UNICEF was using the term residential institutions to cover any institutions where children were taken when separated from their parents; this covered children's homes and detention centres. These children were desperately vulnerable and they became doubly vulnerable because once they were institutionalized, they could become isolated from society and their families. The chronic lack of data on this issue made these children, and the violence that they were enduring, invisible. UNICEF called on a ban on all forms of corporal punishment and violence against children in the family, school, community, and institutions. Effective action should also be taken to ensure that children were only institutionalized as a measure of absolute last resort.
ILO
Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Office said that the International Labour Conference opened at 10 a.m. this morning. The Minister of Labour of Jordan had been elected as Chairman of the Conference. An order of the day would be prepared daily which outlined the main events. Journalists could contact her or other colleagues if they wanted to set up individual interviews. There were a lot of documents already available on the work of the Conference.
Other
Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization said WIPO would be launching on Wednesday, 1 June an on-line forum on intellectual property and the information society. This on-line forum would be open for a period of two weeks for anybody to post comments on issues of relevance to the information society from an intellectual property perspective. A press release was available.
Marco Jimenez Rodriguez of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Dominik Stillhart, the Head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan, who had just concluded a two-year mission in Darfur, Sudan, would be speaking to journalists at the Palais at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 2 June on the latest update on the situation in Sudan and food security in Darfur.
Jennifer Pagonis of the High Commissioner for Refugees said that although UNHCR had been pressing for the relocation of thousands of Rwandan asylum seekers in Burundi's border areas to two inland transit centres, it was very concerned at the manner in which Burundian authorities were now consolidating all of the Rwandans in one ill-equipped transit centre at Songore, in northern Burundi. Over the weekend, thousands of Rwandans were forced to leave three sites along the Burundi/Rwanda border after they were dismantled by armed forces. UNHCR was not informed of this action in advance. An undetermined number of asylum seekers returned to Rwanda, while thousands of others were walking some 50 kilometres to Songore.
Ms. Pagonis said that UNHCR was pleased to announce two important breakthroughs involving some of the refugees who were living in Iraq at the time of the 2003 war and who had been in some difficulty every since. On Sunday, the entire population of 743 people, most of them Iranian Kurds who had been living in an unofficial camp in No Man's Land between Jordan and Iraq for up to two years, had been relocated to Ruweished camp, some 60 kilometres inside Jordan. Most of the People from the No Man's Land were originally part of a population of some 12,000 Iranian Kurds hosted for more than 20 years in Al Tash camp in central Iraq. UNHCR would now redouble its efforts to persuade States to provide solutions for the people relocated from the No Man's Land and for 127 people, mainly Palestinians, who were already housed in Ruweished.
Ms. Pagonis said in another welcome breakthrough, UNHCR had just been informed that the Iraq Prime Minister's Office had approved a proposed plan to relocate Al Tash camp's remaining population, some 3,100 people, to a much safer location near Suleimaniyah in northern Iraq. Another 3,200 former Al Tash residents had already moved to Suleimaniyah region on their own initiative and had been helped by the local authorities, UNHCR and other agencies to settle in their new home area.
Simon Pluess of the World Food Programme said available was a press release at the back of the room concerning the humanitarian video game "Food Force" which WFP launched six weeks ago. Today, more than one million persons had downloaded the game and used it. It was a huge success. It was a game where young people could learn about global hunger by being part of a crack team which helped saved the lives of millions of people in a virtual island suffering from civil war and drought.
Mr. Pluess said WFP and its partner TNT, global provider of express, logistics and mail services, were teaming up with a glittering array of well-known figures for a second consecutive year to end child hunger. The event was called "Walk the World" and WFP hoped it would raise more than 2 million Euros for its global school feeding programme. A press release with more details was available.
Mr. Pluess said at 11:15 a.m. on Thursday, 2 June, Holdbrook Arthur, WFP's Regional Director for East and Central Africa, would speak to journalists about humanitarian challenges in East and Central Africa, with a particular focus on Sudan.
Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said that a group of 1,500 vulnerable internally displaced persons stranded in Western Bahr El Ghazal province in southern Sudan were now within 20 kilometres of the Busseri River which they hoped to cross with IOM assistance shortly. The IDPs were part of a larger group of 5,000 who decided in mid-April to leave Mabia camp in Western Equatoria province to walk to their homes in Raja district in Western Bahr El Ghazal, a distance of about 365 kilometres over densely forested and hostile terrain. Over the past five days, IOM had provided much needed transportation and medical assistance to a total of 1,513 vulnerable IDPs, mainly children, young mothers, elderly, blind and crippled.
Ms. Pandya said that in Turkey, the first major multi-country campaign to prevent human trafficking across key Eastern European countries, Turkey and the former Soviet Union, was being launched tomorrow by IOM in close coordination with the Turkish Government.
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