REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Office at Geneva, chaired the briefing, at which the Deputy Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Filippo Grandi, gave an update on the situation of Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories. Spokespersons and representatives from the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and the World Intellectual Property Organization also made statements.

Secretary-General's Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that today Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was in Washington, D.C., where, yesterday, he had met with Condoleezza Rice. Yesterday morning, he had attended a ceremony at the Capitol in honour of former congressman Tom Lantos, who had died this week. Mr. Ban Ki-moon then met with representatives of United Nations agencies in the United States capital, and spoke to students attending the North American International Model United Nations, organized by Georgetown University. Today, the Secretary-General would meet President Bush to discuss climate change, the Millennium Development Goals, human rights, counter-terrorism, and issues in regions such as Darfur, Kenya, the Middle East, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Geneva Activities

In Geneva, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that this morning at 10 a.m. there had been a plenary meeting of the Conference on Disarmament, at the request of the United States. The United States had announced its decision to try and engage an inoperable National Reconnaissance Office Satellite, currently in a decaying orbit. The statement by the United States delegation was available in the press room, and a press release, in French and English, was being issued as she spoke.

On Monday, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would open its seventy-second session at Palais Wilson, which would run from 18 February to 7 March 2008. During its three-week session the Committee would review the reports presented by the Governments of Fiji, Italy, the United States, Belgium, Nicaragua, Moldova and the Dominican Republic. Because of expected high attendance, the review of the report of the United States – scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday, 21 February and the morning of Friday, 22 February – would exceptionally be held in Room XVI at the Palais des Nations. At its first meeting on Monday, the Committee would elect its new Bureau – a Chairperson, three Vice-Chairpersons and a Rapporteur – and would swear in the nine members of the Committee elected or re-elected at the twenty-second Meeting of States parties to the Convention, held on 17 January 2008.

Update on Situation of Palestinian Refugees

United Nations United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Deputy Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi said, as everyone knew, UNRWA provided essential services in education, health, and poverty reduction to 4.5 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. However, in the past two years, since the Palestinian election in 2006, UNRWA had had to face a cluster of challenges that were unprecedented in scale and gravity. At the end of 2006, UNRWA welcomed the renewed energy put into the peace process in the form of the Annapolis Conference and the conference that had followed. Unfortunately, they had not seen parallel progress in terms of good will measures. There was an increasing gap in the "rhetoric of peace and what people had to face on the ground every day", Mr. Grandi said.

Gaza was the most blatant example of that. The immediate causes of the crisis were relatively simple: closures around the Gaza Strip to impede the flow of goods – including to a certain extent humanitarian goods – and people. In January 2007, according to UNRWA's figures, some 14,000 to 15,000 trucks had passed Gaza borders; in January 2008, only 1,800 trucks had been allowed through. The most serious aspect of the crisis was the energy shortage. The director of a large public hospital in Gaza told him last week that he could no longer deal with the health problems of the population, as he had to spend his whole day looking for fuel. Without it, the generators would stop and vital structures, such as incubators for infants, would shut down. UNRWA had, at various times, run out of paper to print textbooks; run out of cement to complete over $100 million in construction projects; run out of nylon bags used to distribute food; run out of meat; and run out of cash to pay employees. True, those shortages were eventually made up – but very, very late and as a result of a lot of negotiations. To run such a vast operation, catering to so many who were heavily dependent on aid, was very, very difficult indeed.

Turning elsewhere, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had estimated that there were still over 560 blockages of different kinds across the West Bank, which had similar effects to the Gaza Strip closures: people had difficulties reaching health centres and schools; selling produce to larger markets had become almost impossible for small farmers; and even reaching religious centres for prayer was increasingly difficult. This had led possibly, and perhaps probably, to increased political radicalization, particularly of the younger sectors of society. They had long predicted that closures would push many moderate Palestinians towards more radical positions as a reaction rather than the contrary, and many recently published opinion polls suggested that trend had already started.

In Lebanon, Mr. Grandi said some of the situations in the Palestinian refugee camps had been among the worst in the region for many years. Since 2005, the Government of Prime Minister Siniora had shown a very laudable and very courageous degree of openness to projects aimed at improving conditions in Palestinian refugee camps; however, those had suffered a big setback when the Nahr El-Bared camp in the north had been caught in the midst of a violent conflict between the Government forces and Fatah al-Islam militants as a result of which the camp had been razed. Tuesday in Beirut, the Prime Minister and UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd had announced plans to rebuild the camp. The reconstruction of the camp proper – essentially a small town for 30,000 to 35,000 people – was expected to cost $174 million. That project was on a scale that was unprecedented for the United Nations.

There was a real necessity to overcome the gap between a slow moving peace process and conditions on the ground, Mr. Grandi stressed. Peace could only take a firm hold in the region if a climate of confidence was created. That would require a reduction in closures and increased ability of Palestinians to move about and exercise their rights.

Responding on whether UNRWA had felt the impact of the resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council on the situation in Gaza, Mr. Grandi observed that it was often hard to judge such things concretely. Especially if one considered that it was also necessary to ask oneself, what would the situation be like if no resolution had been adopted at all? Indeed, declarations had been adopted in numerous forums on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Unfortunately, they had not witnessed a decrease in the number of human rights violations being committed there.

Chadian Displaced / Chadian Refugees in Cameroon

Reporting on very disturbing developments in eastern Chad, Jennifer Pagonis of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that on Tuesday UNHCR efforts to move traumatized, newly arrived refugees from West Darfur away from the volatile border to camps had been blocked by the presence of unknown armed elements. The armed group had given no reason for their actions, but it had been very clear that the relocation would not take place. Unfortunately, while the UNHCR representative in Chad was now at the border trying to find a solution, meanwhile the refugees were left in an extremely exposed and vulnerable position. The area was highly insecure, with roaming armed groups posing a real threat to the refugees and aid workers.

UNHCR had arranged with the refugees to return within a few days with urgently needed relief supplies. The newly arrived refugees were exhausted; women had reported being raped; and children had been separated from their families. UNHCR would work with the International Committee of the Red Cross to try to reunite them with their families across the border.

UNHCR was facing some tough logistical challenges in getting the refugees away from the border. The plan in the meantime was to concentrate the new arrivals in two or three locations to make giving immediate assistance easier. Over the weekend UNHCR would be working with other partners, including the World Food Programme, to provide them with basic items like sleeping mats, blankets and tents, until UNHCR could move them to other camps.

For the 30,000 Chadians who had fled from N'Djamena to Cameroon, UNHCR was preparing to start transferring them from a transit centre in Kousseri – where some 7,000 to 10,000 refugees were living in the open – to the better equipped Maltam site, some 32 kilometres to the west, Ms. Pagonis said. UNHCR hoped to transfer 1,000 refugees a day. The Maltam site could host up to 50,000 people.

Responding to a question on new arrivals from Darfur into Chad, Ms. Pagonis said there had been 8,000 to 9,000 new arrivals that UNHCR knew about so far, in the areas around Birak and Koruk. There were reports of new arrivals around other areas, but UNHCR had not been able to confirm that yet. The refugees were coming in small, scattered groups and UNHCR was not confident it had located all of them yet.

Severe Winter Weather in Afghanistan

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the harshest winter in 30 years had already claimed 800 lives so far in four provinces of Afghanistan (Herat, Farah, Badhis and Ghor), and had caused the deaths of 134,693 head of livestock. Unusually heavy snowfalls over the past month had also created major access problems in the Western Region of the country. There had been a recent snow melt – but that was also bringing problems of flooding and mudslides and many remote villages remained inaccessible. The health consequences of the severe cold were dramatic: over 170,000 had been diagnosed with pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections over the past month. Food shortages were particular acute – both for human consumption and for livestock. Moreover, many people in provinces across Afghanistan had lost their homes and possessions due to the heavy snow and severe cold, and were now living in the open in freezing conditions. Priority needs included food, blankets, tarpaulins, heaters, and fodder for livestock.

Other

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a press conference to be held at 1 p.m. today in Room IV at the International Conference Centre Geneve (CICG) which would give an overview of progress this week in ongoing negotiations on a protocol on illicit trade in tobacco products. Responding to a journalist, Ms. Chaib clarified that a draft text had not been adopted yet.

Janaina Borges of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said agriculture negotiations were ongoing today. Peter Ungphakorn would give a briefing following the meeting, probably around 12.30 pm in Room PCR at the WTO. Doha Round negotiations would start next week: Rules Negotiations (subsidies) would be held on Monday and Tuesday; Trade Facilitation meetings would be held throughout the week; Industrial Products negotiations would be held on Wednesday afternoon; Agriculture and Services negotiations would both be held on Friday, and would be followed by briefings.

Also on the WTO schedule next week, WTO head Pascal Lamy would meet Swiss Confederation President Pascal Couchepin on Monday in Bern, Ms. Borges said. On Tuesday, there would be a Dispute Settlement Body meeting, with a briefing afterwards. On Wednesday and Thursday, 20 and 21 February, WTO would hold a symposium on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of the Basic Telecom negotiations, and Director General Lamy would speak at the opening. A schedule of the symposium was available in the press room.

Charlotte Griffiths of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said that available was a press release issued following the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Geneva this week, where he had spoken out on his commitment to working with UNECE to establish an enhanced security dialogue with energy producers, consumers and transit countries.

Also available was a press release on transport risks engendered by a Euro-Asian economic boom, Ms. Griffiths said. It warned that poor or non-existent transport infrastructure, and unmanageable border crossing procedures were in danger of impeding development and called for such issues to be dealt with urgently at the political level. To that end, UNECE had organized a Meeting of the Transport Ministers of the Euro-Asian region at the Palais des Nations next Tuesday, 19 February. The Ministers were expected to sign an agreement on Euro-Asian transport links, at 1 p.m. A press conference, would be held at 2.45 p.m., at which a number of Ministers were expected to be present.

Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said that, in the next two weeks WIPO would be putting out its annual statistics. With regard to the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which covered 138 countries, a briefing would be held next week on Wednesday or Thursday. The following week statistics on the International Trademark System would be released, and a briefing would be arranged. Details of the briefing times and dates would follow soon.