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 which also heard from spokespersons and representatives from the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration.
At the end of the briefing, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier recalled that this was the last briefing of the year, and that the first briefing of 2009 would be chaired by UNIS Director, Marie Heuzé, on Tuesday, 6 January.
Secretary-General’s Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that available in the press room was the statement of the Secretary-General on Mauritania, in which he welcomed the announcement that President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi had been released from house arrest. He also welcomed the removal of other restrictions imposed on Cheikh Abdallahi since he had been deposed in a coup d’état on 6 August 2008.
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier also drew attention to a letter sent by the Secretary-General on Friday to the Security Council concerning the situation in Somalia. Following up on his November report to the Council and his statement of 16 December during the Security Council ministerial meeting on Somalia, the Secretary General’s letter had included a paper setting out proposals for the next steps on security and on considerations for a possible peacekeeping option for Somalia. In his letter, the Secretary-General noted the progress made in the Djibouti peace process, but was of the view that conditions were not as yet ripe for a United Nations peacekeeping operation. His efforts to mobilize a robust stabilization force had yet to materialize. In the absence of a stabilization force, the options forwarded to the Security Council provided a package of measures such as the strengthening of the African Union Mission in Somalia, intensified training of Somali military and police personnel, and the establishment of a maritime force with a quick-reaction capacity, aimed at allowing the peace process to take root.
UNICEF – 2008 Roundups
As this was the final press briefing of 2008, Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said she had placed two news notes in the back of the room, which were in some sort roundups for the year. The first concerned the situations of children in South Asia, a region that had been rocked in 2008 by floods, earthquakes and conflicts. It was one of the most emergency-prone regions in the world, with nearly 2.8 million persons affected by severe flooding in Bihar and with a serious earthquake in Pakistan. There were also many conflicts raging in the region, including those in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. But there had also been some positive achievements and UNICEF had scored some successes, such as the “Days of Tranquillity” campaign in September when UNICEF had negotiated a temporary ceasefire among the parties in Afghanistan to allow 1.8 million children to be vaccinated and receive vitamin supplements.
The second news note concerned the numerous schools that had been destroyed over the course of the past year, either by earthquakes or other natural or manmade catastrophes. UNICEF was demanding that the schools be “built back better”. Particular areas of focus were Myanmar, where the 3 May cyclone had affected more than 4,000 schools, the 12 May earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province, where more than 12,000 schools were damaged, and in Haiti, where poorly constructed schools had collapsed, killing teachers and students, and tropical storms and hurricanes had destroyed or damaged nearly 1,000 schools.
Cholera in Zimbabwe
Ms. Taveau added that there would be a teleconference with the UNICEF Zimbabwe office today at 12.30 p.m. in Press Room I to provide an update on the situation there.
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier recalled that at 11.30 a.m. in the same room there would be a press conference by the International Committee of the Red Cross to launch its emergency appeal to assist cholera victims in Zimbabwe
OCHA Year-End Roundup
Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that, at the end of the year, she wished to draw attention to some statistics. In 2008, OCHA had carried out 16 United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team (UNDAC) missions, deploying 96 experts. Seven of the 16 missions had been in the Americas, and 10 out of 16 – or 70 per cent – had been responses to floods and hurricanes, related to climate change.
The UNDAC System, managed by OCHA, had been created 1993. Since its inception, 183 missions had been carried out, and the number of States members had increased from 8 to 67 members with the arrival of Spain and United Arab Emirates this year. In 2009, an UNDAC training would be held for the first time in French, in West Africa. A briefing note was available at the back of the room
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Hélène Caux of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, five UNHCR trucks carrying 23 tons of aid had arrived in Dungu district in northeast Oriental Province on Sunday, after an 11-day journey from Buniya. The aid, which included jerry cans, kitchen sets, plastic sheeting and mats, would be distributed this week by UNHCR, UNICEF and other humanitarian actors to more than 1,700 families, or some 8,600 persons. Those people had been displaced during recent joint military offences by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Dungu, which had taken place 10 days ago.
At the same time, UNHCR remained very concerned about the safety of hundreds of vulnerable families living in villages in the east and northeast of Dungu, Ms. Caux stressed. Those people, who included the elderly and the handicapped, were apparently unable to make their way south to safety. Many of them were sleeping in the open and several of them were in acute need of medical assistance, food and shelter.
Still in the same area, five children who had been abducted by the LRA had recently managed to escape, Ms. Caux said. UNHCR and UNICEF had traced their families in the Dungu district and they would be reunited with their families in the coming days.
In North Kivu province, UNHCR had resumed the voluntary transfer to safer areas of internally displaced persons, Congolese civilians, in Kibati, close to the military frontline, with 667 people transferred yesterday to Mungunga. With the latest transfer, UNHCR had now moved 3,900 of the most vulnerable internally displaced persons to Mungunga.
Responding to questions, Ms. Caux said that, exact figures were not available on the displaced, as at the moment, owing to the security situation, UNHCR only had access to the south part of the affected area. Regarding people moving from Oriental Province to South Sudan, she had heard that some 15,000 people had crossed to South Sudan, but that they had remained in the border area. UNHCR had very little information for the moment. The figure itself was from the Government. Again, owing to the security situation there, UNHCR was currently prevented by the Government from accessing the area.
Other
Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that, three months after a succession of tropical storms and hurricanes had hit Haiti, IOM was continuing to provide assistance to communities affected by the disaster. To date, IOM had distributed repair and reconstruction kits to some 5,500 affected families in hard-hit areas. IOM was also assisting homeowners to rebuild or fix their houses and providing funds for those without housing to enable them to rent housing for a full year. The programme had also been collaborating with the Ministry of Public Works to build drainage canals and facilitate street access for residents through labour-intensive cleanup activities.
IOM’s Director General, William Lacy Swing, would visit Haiti in early January to meet with Haitian authorities and IOM partners, and would also visit key regions where IOM projects were being implemented, Mr. Chauzy added.
In Colombia, Mr. Chauzy highlighted a new $8.4 million agreement between IOM and the Ministry of Education that would allow for 36 new schools to be built for the benefit of more than 8,000 displaced minors in Colombia’s border areas with Ecuador. In 2008, IOM education projects in Colombians had benefited more than 14,000 displaced minors.