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 meetings in Geneva and New York, the fight against malaria, the food crisis in Malawi, human rights and other issues. Spokespersons for the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children's Fund, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the International Organization for Migration participated in the briefing.

Geneva Meetings

Mrs. Heuzé said the third and last PrepCom for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society had opened yesterday at the Palais des Nations. Highlights of the meetings of the PrepCom were being prepared daily. Some 1,350 persons were participating in the PrepCom which was chaired by Ambassador Janis Karklins of Latvia. Two Working Groups had been set up, the first on Internet governance which was presided over by Ambassador Masood Khan of Pakistan, and the second on financing mechanisms whose President was Lyndall Shope-Mafole, Director-General of South Africa's Department of Communications. The Rapporteur was George Papadatos of Greece. The opening speech by Yoshio Utsumi, the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union, was available. The PrepCom would continue its work until 30 September.

The Working Group on a draft legally binding normative instrument for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance was continuing its public meetings in Salle XII under the Presidency of Ambassador Bernard Kessedjian of France. The Working Group would conclude its work on Friday, 23 September.

Mrs. Heuzé said the Committee on the Rights of the Child was also continuing its session at the Palais Wilson. Today, it was concluding its consideration of the second periodic report of China, including the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau. On Thursday, 22 September, the Committee would be considering the periodic report of Finland.

The Conference on Disarmament was concluding the third and last part of its 2005 session this week. The last plenary would start at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 22 September during which the Conference was expected to adopt its annual report which would be presented to the General Assembly.

The International Day of Peace was commemorated on 21 September. The message of the Secretary-General on this occasion was available in the press room. The website of the United Nations had a page on the International Day of Peace which interested journalists could access. Unfortunately, they would have to try this afternoon because there had been a fire on the twenty-third floor at Headquarters and the UN website was down until the damages were repaired.

Mrs. Heuzé said available was a press release from the United Nations Environment Programme on the environmental impact of trade liberalization on the environment. The press release announced the launch of six new assessment reports on the environmental impact of trade liberalisation in the rice sector.

There would be a press conference at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 21 September by Adolf Ogi, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Sport for Development and Peace, and Roger Federer, the world's reigning tennis champion and Spokesperson for the International Year for Sport and Physical Education, on the intermediary review about the International Year of Sport and Physical Education.

New York Activities

Mrs. Heuzé said the Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty would meet at Headquarters from 21 to 23 September. The Secretary-General would inaugurate the Conference. The President-designate of the Conference was Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister of Australia. This Treaty had been negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament in 1996. It needed 44 ratifications to enter into force, but it had only received 33 ratifications.

Fight Against Malaria

Mrs. Heuzé said Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour would be giving a press conference on Monday, 26 September, at 2 p.m. at the Swiss Press Club on the concert "United against Malaria" which he and other international artists would perform on 8 October at the Geneva Arena. Among other things, Mr. N'Dour, who was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, would explain why he was cooperating with the United Nations against malaria.

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said available at the back of the room was a press release on the emergency measures which WHO was taking against malaria in Niger. WHO was today dispatching 100,000 anti-malarial treatments to Niger, where the peak malaria season had begun in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. More than 50 per cent of all deaths among children under five in Niger were from malaria. Among children under the age of five in Niger, 262 out of 1,000 died from malaria; and among children under the age of one year in Niger, 153 out of 1,000 died from malaria. The hunger and malnutrition affecting inhabitants of Niger made children all the more vulnerable to malaria. Because Niger's health workers were not fully acquainted with the use of the artemisinin-based combination therapy, WHO had sent a team of malaria experts last week where they had trained 40 health workers who were now travelling across the country to teach other health workers about the diagnosis and treatment of malaria.

In response to a question, Mrs. Heuzé said the concert was being organized by the United Nations Office at Geneva and the Geneva Foundation to underline the fight against malaria. Youssou N'Dour was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and also a special representative for the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, and when she had contacted him to ask which cause should benefit from his free performance in Geneva for the Sixtieth Anniversary of the United Nations, he had chosen the fight against malaria. Other partners were the "Roll back Malaria" Partnership, the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and WHO. She encouraged journalists to come to the press conference on 26 September. Between eight and 10 other international artists would also be participating in the concert.

Responding to another question, Mrs. Heuzé said this was the first time that the United Nations in Geneva was organizing such a concert. It was not the first time that the United Nations and its agencies had participated in organizing such a concert as UNICEF had much experience with such events. This was the main public concert to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter and it revolved around two of the eight Millennium Development Goals, notably those related to health and child mortality. She recalled that at a recent briefing by the Executive Director of the Roll back Malaria Partnership, it had been said that if $ 3 billion was put into the fight against malaria over the next five years, the world would go a long way in greatly limiting the impact of malaria which was the first cause of child mortality in Africa.

Food Crisis in Malawi

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said families living in the south of Malawi were especially affected by the drought and the decreasing availability of food in the area. Malawi has just had its worst harvest in 10 years because of the drought. The Government estimated that 4.2 million persons in Malawi needed food aid from now until the next harvest in April. WFP had started providing food aid for two million persons. It was expected that the number of persons in need of food aid would continue to rise. Because of the shortage of food, prices were increasing sharply by up to 50 per cent between April and July. Malawi was one of the African countries worst affected by HIV/AIDS, and the life expectancy rate there was 39 years. WFP had issued a flash appeal for $ 49 million for Malawi, but only $ 4 million had been received. Much more aid was needed urgently.

A spokesperson of the United Nations Children's Fund said that available at the back of the room was a press release stating that 4.2 million or 34 per cent of the population of Malawi would not be able to meet their minimum food requirements from now until the next harvest in March 2006. Of those, an estimated one million were children under the age of five and pregnant women. According to a Malawi survey, children have a very poor nutritional status; some 48 per cent of children under five are stunted; five per cent are wasted or severely malnourished and 22 per cent are underweight or malnourished. The situation was aggravated by the situation of HIV/AIDS and chronic poverty. UNICEF was supporting a number of nutrition rehabilitation centres in several parts of Malawi.

Human Rights

José Luis Díaz, Spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said there would be a one-day informal session of the Commission on Human Rights next week. This informal meeting had become a tradition, an occasion to look at the state of preparations for the discussion of human rights at the General Assembly in New York. This year, the informal meeting was taking on added significance and interest because of the World Summit in New York, which had agreed, among other things, to create a Human Rights Council in place of the Commission. The meeting would take place on Tuesday, 27 September at 3 p.m. in Salle XVII. High Commissioner Louise Arbour would address the meeting. Her statement would be made available on 27 September before the meeting. This would be the first opportunity for a considered, formal statement by the High Commissioner on the outcome of the World Summit as it related to human rights. The Office was also looking at the possibility of having the High Commissioner meet with journalists to brief them on what she sees for the future of the human rights programme.

Mr. Díaz said journalists would be getting shortly a statement which had been issued in Kathmandu in which the Office of the High Commissioner in Nepal was expressing its serious concern on reports of excessive use of force by police in their response to recent public demonstrations, and the subsequent beatings and abuse by police of the participants in the demonstrations. The Office was also very concerned that more than four moths after the end of the state of emergency in Nepal, peaceful public gatherings continued to be prohibited in a number of areas in Kathmandu. There were also similar bans in other parts of the country.

In response to a question, Mr. Díaz said the High Commissioner would be talking about her vision for the human rights programme and what the reforms agreed at the Summit meant for the programme, which included the Commission but also her Office. The Summit had endorsed OHCHR’s recommendation that resources for the programme be doubled, for example. He did not know what country delegations would speak about, but some might speak about what they thought the new Council should look like.

Other

Cathy Jewel of the World Intellectual Property Organization said the annual meetings of the WIPO assemblies of Member States would begin on Monday, 26 September until 5 October. Copies of the draft agenda were in the press room and journalists who were interested in getting the whole set of documents on the assemblies, or only on a certain subject could contact her. There would be a press release issued on 26 September which would summarize the main topics before the assemblies.

Ron Redmond of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees said the first of more than 1,500 Chadian refugees who had spent the past two decades in exile in the Central African Republic were scheduled to return to their homeland today in a UNHCR repatriation operation expected to be completed by early October. A UNHCR convoy carrying 321 Chadian returnees was expected to arrive this afternoon in the southern Chad town of Gore after a two-day journey from the strife-torn northern Central African Republic. Three or four additional convoys would follow in the next few weeks and the repatriation movement should be completed by the beginning of October. Continued insecurity in the northern Central African Republic had finally prompted the refugees to go home. Thousands of Central African Republic citizens had also fled the region in recent months seeking refugee in neighbouring Chad.

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said in Darfur, Sudan, WFP had distributed food to 2.45 million persons in August which was a record, despite challenges which included insecurity and the rainy season. Insecurity was on the increase. Four WFP drivers had been killed in Darfur this year and others had been attacked and the food they were carrying had been seized. WFP needed $ 40 million to continue its food distribution in Darfur.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said she wanted to draw attention to the south of Somalia where the situation in the two southern districts of Gedo and Lower Juba was worrying. In Gedo, 59,000 people were in a livelihood crisis while another 53,000 were in humanitarian emergency. This added up to around 30 per cent of the population of Gedo who needed urgent assistance. In lower Juba, which was recently affected by floods, according to MSF Holland, 10 to 15 cases of severe malnutrition and 20 to 30 moderate malnutrition cases were admitted to their facility every week. Access to persons was obstructed due to poor roads, limited transportation and insecurity. The UN had requested $ 162 million for Somalia, but it had only received $ 71 million. Almost one million people in Somalia, including 400,000 internally displaced persons, were in urgent need of assistance.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said the Japanese Government was contributing more than $ 4.6 million to support IOM's efforts to provide return and reintegration assistance to internally displaced persons and refugees who wished to return to their homes in southern Sudan. The funding would allow IOM to establish and manage three priority way stations in the provinces of Bahr el Ghazal and West and South Kordofan to provide clean water, emergency food provisions, health assistance and temporary shelter to returning internally displaced persons and refugees. There was an estimated six million internally displaced persons in Sudan, with some four million of them displaced by the war in the south.

Mr. Chauzy said children affected by HIV/AIDS in camps for internally displaced people in northern Uganda were getting inadequate support and were routinely vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence, according to IOM. As a result, an IOM pilot programme had just begun to help 262 people and it would aim to prevent sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS among children and youth living in camps for internally displaced persons and to improve and develop support for those affected by the disease.

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