REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE
Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard statements from spokespersons and representatives of the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration.
At the beginning of the briefing, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier welcomed the Director and students from the Protestant Journalists School of Berlin, who were attending the briefing today.
Climate Change Meeting/Secretary-General's Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that yesterday at United Nations Headquarters in New York representatives from nearly 160 countries, including more than 70 Heads of State, had taken part in a high-level, informal discussion on climate change. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had convened the meeting to give participants an opportunity to exchange views on the challenges of climate change and how to respond to it.
Addressing the opening plenary yesterday morning, the Secretary-General had stressed that science had proven that climate change was real, and it was affecting mostly those who were the least able to cope. He had called for national action, with industrialized countries taking the lead in reducing their emissions and support for adaptation being provided for poor countries. But national action alone was not enough: climate change had to be confronted within a global framework, namely the United Nations climate change process. The Secretary-General had also stressed the need for a breakthrough at the upcoming negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said.
The statements by the Secretary-General and the President of the General Assembly at the high-level meeting were available in the Press Room. Also available in the Documentation Room were summaries of all the addresses made at the meeting, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said.
The statement of the Secretary-General on Myanmar was also available in the Press Room, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier added.
Geneva Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that this morning the Human Rights Council would continue its review, rationalization and improvement of mandates with that of the Independent Expert on Haiti, Louis Joinet. It would then consider the issue of racism, and would examine the report of the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Within the context of its discussions on technical assistance and capacity-building, the Council might also officially adopt three documents concerning the criteria for election of members to the Advisory Expert Group; the criteria for the nomination of Special Rapporteurs and other Special Procedures; and guidelines for documentation relating to the Universal Periodic Review.
Tomorrow, the Council would return once again to the review, rationalization and improvement of mandates, with the Special Rapporteur on the right to food; the Special Rapporteur on indigenous peoples; the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Sudan; and the independent expert on Burundi. Starting on Thursday, 27 September, the Council would review its conclusions and decisions for the entire session, which would end this Friday. In that connection, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier recalled that all the draft resolutions and decisions before the Council at this session were available via the Council's Extranet site (http://portal.ohchr.org/portal/page/portal/HRCExtranet).
At Palais Wilson, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Committee on the Rights of the Child was continuing the work of its forty-sixth session, having considered yesterday the initial reports of Bulgaria on the two Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child: on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; and on the involvement of children in armed conflict. Press releases on those meetings were available in French and English. Tomorrow, the Committee was scheduled to examine the initial reports of France on measures that country was taking to implement the two Optional Protocols.
Flooding in Africa: Uganda, West Africa, Sudan and Ethiopia
Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said she had put an information note concerning the flood-affected areas in Uganda at the back of the room. UNICEF was deeply concerned about the situation of some 300,000 persons in the north of the country, the vast majority of whom were women and children. These were the worst floods Uganda had known in decades, and its impact was exacerbated by the conflict in the north and the fact that most families there were experiencing displacement for the second time. It was estimated that 200,000 people were in need of emergency shelter, and an emergency vaccination campaign as well as the distribution of insecticide-treated bednets was already under way to try and head off a malaria outbreak. UNICEF was urgently appealing for $7.2 million to continue its aid programme for the most vulnerable, women and children. A news note and a humanitarian action update on the situation were available in the back of the room.
Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme (WFP) added that, despite transportation difficulties, WFP had already managed to distribute 1,051 tons of food assistance to 64,328 persons in the flood-affected areas of Uganda, either by truck or by helicopter. However, the forecasts were for more rains in October, and WFP so no alternative to airlifting in assistance in some locations. WFP urgently needed $64.4 million to feed not only the 300,000 flood victims, but also the 1.4 million refugees and displaced persons in Uganda. So far, no funds had been received for this operation.
In West Africa, Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that, as of today, some 609,000 persons had been affected by flooding there: 41,000 in Burkina Faso; 2,000 in Côte d’Ivoire; 300 in Gambia; 17,000 in Liberia; 25,000 in Mali; 260,000 in Ghana; 30,000 in Mauritania; 49,000 in Niger; 50,000 in Nigeria; 3,100 in Senegal; 112,000 in Togo; and 4,500 in Sierra Leone. Those figures were updated daily.
In Niger, OCHA's greatest concern was the fact that the heavy rains had resulted in the displacement of landmines, and the risk of hitting them any time and any place was very high, Ms. Byrs warned. The United Nations Development Programme would make a rapid preliminary assessment of the landmine risk. The World Food Programme, the Red Cross and the Government had provided 1,064 metric tons of food for flood victims in Niger. Whereas food assistance had been assured for current and arising needs, there was a need for blankets and mosquito nets.
In Ethiopia, new flooding had been reported since the first week of September, Ms. Byrs said. Nationwide, it was estimated that 226,000 people had been affected, of whom almost 71,000 had been displaced from six regions: Amhara; Afar; Gambella; the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR); Somali; Tigray; and Oromiya. Approximately 5,630 hectares of crops had been destroyed, in particular in the region of Mustahil. In addition, the floods had inundated grazing lands, affecting livestock. Risk of additional flooding and displacement was high in the flood prone areas as the water level was rising daily.
In the Sudan, Ms. Berthiaume said that WFP would be dropping food supplies to 43,800 victims of flooding in three states of Southern Sudan that were inaccessible by road. That was in addition to the food assistance WFP had been distributing to some 89,000 flood victims in other areas in the south and east of the country. The distribution of food assistance to the Lakes, Jonglei and Upper Nile states would begin in October and continue for one month. It was planned to airdrop 1,400 tons of food, and to ferry down another 264 tons via the Nile. The floods in Sudan, which had killed 113 people, had affected nearly half a million, and 200,000 people were now without shelter. An interagency appeal for $20.2 million for flood victims in Sudan launched in mid-August had only received $1 million so far.
Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
In an update on the Ebola outbreak in the Kasai Occidental Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that today the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta had confirmed eight more cases of Ebola in its labs. That brought the total of confirmed cases of Ebola to 17 so far, in addition to 5 confirmed cases of typhoid and 1 case of Shigella. Six of the 17 confirmed Ebola cases had died. WHO was awaiting the test results from further samples.
Two new field laboratories had been put in place – one by the Canadian Public Health Agency and the other by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) – which would accelerate the provision of information on the epidemic, Ms. Chaib said. It was hoped that those field labs could be up and running as of today. There were at least 26 international staff from WHO, the CDC and the Canadian Public Health Agency on the ground, without counting experts from other partners, such as the Red Cross, UNICEF, and Médecins sans Frontières, who were working to control the outbreak as well.
WHO's priorities for the outbreak remained the same, Ms. Chaib noted: tracing contacts; setting up isolation units; monitoring suspect cases; doing on-the-spot lab diagnosis; and implementing infection control measures in hospitals, among others. Social mobilization – coordinated by the Ministry of Health with the support of the partners including WHO, UNICEF, and the Red Cross – had been working effectively to raise public awareness in the affected areas, and public service messages on how to identify and prevent the spread of the disease had been translated into local languages through posters and leaflets, and radio announcements.
Responding to a journalist, Ms. Chaib said that, since 27 April there had been 400 cases of illness reported in Kasai Occidental, resulting in 170 deaths.
Drought in Moldova
Teresa Buerkle of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that today FAO and WFP would issue a joint report on the crop and food supply situation in Moldova, where severe drought had drastically reduced crop yields, driving up food prices and reducing access to food for poor households. Cereal production was down by 63 per cent as compared with last year, and about 70 per cent lower than the average for the past five years. Most households had therefore been forced to sell livestock due to the lack of forage and to meet higher food prices.
Moldova's 2007 drought could be compared with that of 1946, during which many Moldovans starved to death, Ms. Buerkle warned. The full report would be available later today and a press release would go out this afternoon.
Other
Ms. Taveau of UNICEF said that once again heavy rains had hit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which had already been devastated by flooding owing to strong rains at the end of August. While in certain districts the work of drainage and reconstruction had already begun, this second wave of rains, linked to the passage of Typhoon Wipha, was threatening those rehabilitation efforts. UNICEF and its partners had begun distributing a second round of humanitarian assistance, including medicines, water purification tablets and tents. It had also launched a new assessment mission, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, to assess the damage and draw up a list of priority needs for the next school term.
Jennifer Pagonis of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) invited journalists to an award ceremony for the presentation of the Nansen Award to Maltese lawyer Katrine Camilleri for her courageous work with refugees and asylum-seekers in Malta, on Monday 1 October in the UNHCR atrium at 6.30 p.m.
Ms. Pagonis said available at the back of the room was a special edition of UNHCR's Refugees magazine, devoted to the phenomenon of statelessness, which was being launched today. There had now been major breakthroughs in this area in three Asian countries - namely, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and most recently Bangladesh - which, all told, should benefit some 3 million formerly stateless people. There were also significant legal developments currently under way in Brazil. In particular, UNHCR warmly welcomed the recent decision of Bangladesh to confirm citizenship for at least 160,000 of the country's 300,000 Urdu-speaking population, also known as Biharis, who had become stateless as a by-product of the separation of Pakistan from India in 1947 and the subsequent civil war that had led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Turning to the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Ms. Pagonis said that there was an important funding shortfall of some $7.1 million for UNHCR operations there. UNCHR feared its operations in West Darfur would have to be scaled down if it did not receive additional funding very soon.
A briefing note on these subjects and others was available at the back of the room, Ms. Pagonis said.
Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced that IOM had assisted a group of 1,255 internally displaced persons return to and resettle in their former areas of residence in Western Côte d’Ivoire. The group, mostly West African migrant workers who had fled ethnic strife in 2002 and 2003, was the largest to date to benefit from the current return and reintegration programme.
In Southern Africa, the HIV vulnerability of workers in the road transport sector was set to be discussed at a high-level workshop – jointly organized by IOM, the North Star Foundation, and WFP – to be held this week in Swaziland (26-28 September), Mr. Chauzy said. Southern Africa was the epicentre of the global HIV epidemic, with 32 per cent of people with HIV in the world living in the region, according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS.
Finally, Mr. Chauzy announced that the IOM expert on displacement in Iraq, Dana Graber Ladek would hold a press conference tomorrow, at 10 a.m., in Room 1.
Ms. Taveau of UNICEF invited journalists to a press briefing tomorrow at which UNICEF would detail the achievements of the first year of its global partnership with the Barcelona Football Club to help the world's most vulnerable children. Speaking would be Joan Laporta, President of FC Barcelona and Philip O'Brien, Regional Director for the UNICEF Europe. The press conference would be held in Room III at 11.30 a.m. A media advisory was available.
At the end of the briefing, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced that at 11.30 a.m. today there would be a meeting of the Mixed Commission of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, at which the two partners would sign a three-year programme for the promotion of human rights. Speaking would be Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Abdou Diouf, the Secretary-General of La Francophone. The meeting would be held at Palais Wilson, in the Delegate's room.
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier also reminded journalists that the World Intellectual Property Organization was holding a press conference today at 3 p.m. at WIPO headquarters on a joint WIPO-Geneva International Academic Network pilot project supporting developing country researches in creating, owning and exploiting health research results.