REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ms. Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service at the United Nations Office at Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for and Representatives of the United Nations Environment Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children's Fund, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the World Food Programme.

Secretary-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged “world leaders to renew their commitment to the global partnership for development” at the occasion of the publication of the annual report of the Millennium Development Goals Gap Task Force. “While the gaps are serious, let us not be daunted by them. Despite setbacks, shortfalls and obstacles, we have the tools and the resources to achieve the goals by 2015,” Mr. Ban said. He added that the report “paints a picture that should motivate world leaders to act with urgency” at the Millennium Development Goals Summit, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 20 to 22 September. Transcripts of Mr. Ban’s press conference on that topic were available.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier also said that copies of the statement of the Secretary-General on the postponement of the second round of presidential elections in Guinea were available in the press room.

Director-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, will be in New York next week to attend the General Debate of the General Assembly and to participate in the high-level meeting convened by the Secretary-General under the title “Revitalizing the Work of the Conference on Disarmament and Taking Forward Multilateral Disarmament Negotiations", which will take place on Friday, 24 September. The high-level meeting will be an opportunity to provide greater political impetus for revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament and will also aim at promoting multilateral disarmament, including through addressing the larger challenges facing the wider architecture of disarmament machinery.

International Day of Peace Soccer Match

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier also reminded that the United Nations Office at Geneva has organized, together with the United Nations Development Programme and other partners, a friendly soccer match to mark the International Day of Peace, the start of the International Year of Youth and the “Stand Up Against Poverty” campaign. The match will take place today from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the Stade de Varembé (Rue de Vermont, 33). A team composed of diplomats from Permanent Missions in Geneva and staff members of United Nations agencies in Geneva will play against a team of local high-school students.

Before the match, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, and Ms. Cecile Molinier, Director of the UNDP European Office at Geneva, will deliver remarks. Ms. Sandrine Salerno, Mayor of the City of Geneva, and Ms. Anja Wyden Guelpa, Chancelière d’état de la République et du Canton de Genève, will also address the teams. All are cordially invited to attend this interesting match, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said.

Committee on the Rights of the Child

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Committee on the Rights of the Child had this week examined the reports submitted by Guatemala, Angola, Spain and Sierra Leone, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Burundi. Today the Committee was holding a private meeting. Next Monday and Tuesday it will consider the reports of Montenegro and Sudan. On Thursday and Friday, 23 and 24 September, the Committee will review the reports of Sri Lanka and Nicaragua.

Human Rights Council

Ms. Clair Kaplun of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Human Rights Council was currently holding its fifteenth regular session. This morning the Council was hearing from the Independent Expert on Sudan and next Monday it would hold a panel discussion on the elimination of discrimination against women. It was further likely to hear an address by the Minister of Justice and Human Rights of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Pakistan

Ms. Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the revised appeal on Pakistan would be launched this afternoon in New York. Currently the situation remained serious in the Sindh and Punjab regions as these two regions alone represented 75 per cent of the over 20 million people affected by the floods. The crisis in Pakistan was unequal across the country, Ms. Byrs said, and underscored the differences between the north-west and the south of the country, where new villages and towns were being inundated in Sindh’s Dadu and Jamshoro districs due to an overflowing of Manchar Lake. To such an unprecedented situation there would be a response without precedence and an appeal that would be more significant than the first. In terms of logistical coordination an International Humanitarian Partnership base camp was currently being constructed in Sukkur to support humanitarian operations in Sindh province and since 5 August over 1,800 metric tons of relief care have been airlifted to the least accessible areas.

Ms. Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme (WFP) said that the WFP food assistance portion of the appeal would amount to USD 600 million up to July 2011. The WFP will be seeking to reach an average of 6 million people per month with the emergency food assistance, while also transitioning to early recovery activities that focused on young children. The WFP will be providing emergency school meals, partly to assist in getting children back to a normal life and encouraging them to return to schools where possible, but also to provide special ready-to-use food for young children as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. The WFP will be working together with the Food and Agricultural Organization as well as other partners to support farmers to ensure they can get back to their fields as soon as possible. This weekend the WFP and its partners will be providing seeds kits designed to help people produce additional food for their families and for being sold.

Ms. Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said IOM has opened a new hub in Hyderabad to speed up distribution of shelter and non-food relief items. The hub has already distributed more than 11,000 tarpaulins and tenths of thousands of blankets and ropes that had been donated by the United States Government Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. IOM and the more than 70 partners working on shelter and non-food item assistance have reached 2.1 million people since early August, but the needs remain staggering, particularly in Sindh only a fraction of the families needing a roof are being reached. Conservative estimates suggest that about 10 million people may still be without basic shelter from wind, rain and sun across Pakistan due the floods. These estimates were based a recent announcement by the Government of Pakistan of more than 1.8 million homes been damaged or destroyed. However, international aid consignments of shelter aid are continuing to arrive in the country. So far IOM has taken delivery of 27 flights with consignments from USAID, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the European Union, the United Nations and Americares. Yesterday it had taken delivery of 3,000 tents donated to the National Disaster Management Authority by China. On the appeal front, OIM initial appeal for USD 38 million is now 68 per cent funded and the OIM was also part of the afore-mentioned appeal which will be released later today in New York.

Policy Brief on Green Economy and MDGs

Ms. Isabelle Valentiny of the United Nations Environment Programme said on Monday the agency’s Executive Director, Mr. Achim Steiner, and the project leader of Green Economy Initiative, Mr. Pavan Sukhdev, would release a policy brief on the Green Economy and the Millennium Development Goals. The report showed how green investments could help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. A press conference would be held on Monday 20 September at 11 a.m. EST but journalists could also participate through a dial-in teleconference. The report was available in the room but embargoed until Monday 4 p.m.

Drop in Child Mortality

Ms. Marixie Mercado of the United Nations Children's Fund said according to the latest United Nations under-five mortality estimates that were released yesterday the total number of under-five deaths had decreased globally from 12.4 million per year to 8.1 million from 1990 to 2009. The global under-five mortality rate had dropped by a third over that period, from 89 deaths per 1,000 live births to 60 in 2009.

Reduction of HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa

Ms. Saya Oka of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said ahead of next week’s Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York UNAIDS was releasing today new data that show that significant progress has been made on Millennium Development Goal number 6. Twenty-two of the most affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa have seen a decline of more than 25 per cent in new HIV infections.

Ms. Karen Stanecki, Senior Advisor and Epidemiologist UNAIDS, added that UNAIDS felt it had made progress to reaching targets in some of the most affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. A report with the list of the 22 countries that had been able to reduce their HIV infections by 25 per cent was was available in the room.

Refugees

Mr. Andrej Mahecic of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the agency this week received reports of a killing and drownings in the Gulf of Aden, indicating that the autumn mixed-migration sailing season has resumed. Reportedly an Ethiopian man was beaten to death and thrown overboard by smugglers navigating a boat from the Somali village of Shimbrale to Yemen. Also, two Somali women were reported to have drowned on Monday off the coast of Yemen’s Shabwa region as smugglers disembarked passengers too far from the shore. UNHCR has established mechanisms for referral, identification and burial found on the beaches in Yemen.

In a separate dramatic story unfolding on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, over the past three months UNHCR and its partners in the Bab El-Mandab transit center have noted increasing mortality among new Ethiopian arrivals from Djibouti, with over 40 corpses being discovered on the Yemeni Red Sea shore since June. In addition, a growing number of Ethiopian arrivals have been found to be suffering violent diarrhoea, vomiting and dehydration. Partners of UNHCR, the Yemeni Red Crescent Society and SHS have transported people to medical facilities. A single clinic, at the Kharaz refugee camp near Bab El-Mandab has treated 47 such cases.

So far his year 32,364 African migrants and refugees have arrived in Yemen from the Horn of Africa aboard 677 smuggling boats fleeing situations of conflict, instability, drought and poverty. During this period, some 50 people have lost their lives at sea trying to reach Yemen – either due to poor health and sanitary conditions during the journey, drownings, or fatal injuries at the hands of smugglers.

Colombia Land Restitution Agreement

Ms. Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said today the IOM and Colombian Government will be signing an agreement to work together during the next four years in support of peasant farmers who, because of the activities of illegal armed groups, were forced to abandon their lands, were victims of land dispossession, and those who occupy lands but do not have legal title. The agreement includes the provision of technical assistance for drafting a plan for the restitution of lands through a newly-created Land Restitution System, a programme to legalize rural land tenancies, support for the implementation of the Land Reform Bill currently being debated in Congress, and for the creation of a rural development programme for victims of violence. IOM has supported three land restitution pilot projects which have documented more than 1,000 cases of land dispossession and informal land tenancy, as well as the formal recognition of 377 land tenancies. The first point of action under the new agreement is a strategy to formalize land tenancies in the south of the country, with US$ 128,000 set aside for this purpose.

Haiti Earthquake

Ms. Pandya said IOM's emergency response to the Haiti earthquake has received a USD 3 million contribution from Community Chest Korea, a private umbrella fundraising organization in South Korea. IOM will use the funding to provide temporary shelter, non-food items and community centre solutions to 767 internally displaced families in Léogâne and surrounding areas. According to the Haitian Government 80 per cent of the city of Léogâne had been destroyed in the quake. Eight months on, as the annual hurricane season peaks, the humanitarian need in Haiti is particularly acute.

Other

Ms. Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reminded that the access to specialized patent information programme would be launched today at 3 p.m. in Room A. That programme was a joint initiative between WIPO and prominent information providers such as Lexis Nexis, Minesoft, ProQuest, Questel-Orbit, as well as Thompson Reuters and WIPS. At the formal partner statement of intent signing journalists could ask questions to each of these organizations and to the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Mr. Francis Gurry.

Ms. Shamoon also reminded that the annual meeting of WIPO Member States would kick-off on Monday with a two-day high-level segment for which at last count about 74 Ministers were confirmed.

Ms. Shamoon also informed that the Government of Morocco had organized a spectacular cultural event for the opening reception of the Assemblies of Member States. The event would take place on Monday, 20 September, at 6 p.m. in the main building.