REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization.

Davos

Ms. Momal-Vanian announced the Secretary-General was to participate in the World Economic Forum at Davos this week, where he would engage with a number of private sector leaders. He was also scheduled to speak at the Forum’s sessions on ending energy poverty and on the Rio+20 sustainable development summit, she said, and meet with a number of heads of State and government. The Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Mr. Tokayev, was to accompany him on this trip.

From there, the Secretary-General planned to travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to participate in the summit of the African Union (AU). In addition, Mr. Ban was to officially receive the report of his high-level Panel on Global Sustainability from its two co-chairs, the presidents of South Africa and Finland, at a launch event in Addis Ababa on 30 January.

Gaélle Sévenier for the World Food Programme (WFP) said the Executive Director of the Programme was also to attend the Davos meeting, which the WFP saw as an excellent opportunity to engage with political and economic actors as well as heads of enterprise to discuss their role in supporting global efforts to fight hunger. As 2012 heralds the 50th anniversary of the WFP, their theme for Davos was “Transforming lives for 50 years”, she said.

South Sudan

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that Ms. Hilde Johnson, the Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), had yesterday briefed correspondents via videolink from Juba and strongly condemned incidents of hate speech, which she said had been found largely on the Internet. Individuals and groups were inciting ethnic violence against others in the region, she explained, and such statements were unacceptable.

Ms. Johnson said there was an urgent need to deploy more Government and police forces in and around flashpoint areas in Jonglei, chiefly to protect border areas, ease tensions and provide a stabilizing influence. In this regard, the Government’s decision to establish a “peace team” had been essential and she hoped that it would move ahead with its reconciliation mandate as soon as possible.

Elisabeth Byrs for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the humanitarian community continued to scale up the response for people affected by the large-scale violence in Jonglei, with assessments now doubling the number of persons in need to slightly less than 120,000.

She continued saying that some of the affected areas south of Pibor had not yet been reached due to inaccessibility. Logistics had been identified as a key gap in the response effort, with a shortage of transportation identified as the primary obstacle. Aid organizations were currently doing everything possible to mobilize vehicles to the affected areas.

Meanwhile, the coordination hub of the response operation in Pibor for the southern half of Jonglei was up and running, and 16 humanitarian organizations were on the ground providing assistance. And the number of medical evacuations to Juba had reduced in Pibor, likely attributable to the re-establishment of an NGO medical facility in the town, where the number of patients had increased from 35 to over 100 people.

She added that about five metric tons of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) equipment arrived by road on 15 January, five latrines were being constructed and hygiene promotion activities were planned to start this week. The outpatient programme for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition had also been re-established.

The South Sudan call for financing remained funded at nine per cent, having received $71 million, she said. And answering a question she reiterated that although the global financial crisis was touching the budgets of all member states, the role of OCHA was to continue to ardently draw attention to crisis situations and the subsequent needs of those affected.

Melissa Fleming for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was alarming that an air attack on vulnerable refugees already fleeing violence in Sudan's Blue Nile state had yesterday (23 January) left one Sudanese refugee boy injured and 14 others missing.

The attack was carried out in two instances, she said, with nine bombs falling at the refugee transit site, located less than 10km from the border with Sudan. At the time of the incident, about 5,000 refugees were at the site from where movement to new settlements took place on a daily basis. UNHCR and International Organization for Migration teams with 14 trucks were supervising relocation operations when the first round of bombings took place and refugees jumped out of the trucks and scattered. Agency staff also had to seek safety.

She added that this was the latest in a string of attacks on Sudanese refugees in border areas. Last November, New Gufa an entry point for refugees in Maban County, Upper Nile state was bombed over several days. Yida refugee settlement, in Unity state near the border with Sudan's South Kordofan state, was also hit by air raids.

She said this was another example of the dangerous state of the border regions and the UNHCR was now in a race against time to move as many people as possible away while the roads were still passable during the dry season, which lasted the next two months.

Ethiopia

Melissa Fleming for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said UNHCR was very concerned at reports this week of two suspected poliomyelitis cases among Somali refugees at Dollo Ado's Bur Amino camp in Ethiopia, and three suspected cases from the surrounding host community.

She said UNHCR staff in the five refugee camps in Dollo Ado were working closely with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, local government partners, WHO, UNICEF, MSF and other health partners to coordinate the response. The immediate priority was to confirm the outbreak, she explained, and samples have been collected and sent to Addis Ababa for laboratory confirmation. Once the strain of virus was identified, the appropriate vaccine will be dispatched to Dollo Ado for a mass vaccination campaign in the camps and surrounding communities.

In addition a nationwide anti-polio campaign in all zones of the country was scheduled to start this week (January 27) and would be expanded to include all refugee camps.

Answering a question about polio vaccination in Somalia, Tarik Jasarevic for the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was very difficult to maintain or achieve any immunization activity in areas, such as large parts of Somalia, where access had been denied to NGOs. He said it was hoped that Somalia would remain polio-free. A resolution adopted by the Executive Board at its last session had stressed the importance of pursuing efforts to eradicate the disease.

Iraq

Rupert Colville for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said the High Commissioner was shocked at reports that 34 individuals, including two women, were executed in Iraq on 19 January following their conviction for various crimes.

Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day, he said. And given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it was a truly shocking figure.

The total number of individuals sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004 was believed to stand at more than 1,200, he said, and the total number actually executed since then was not known, although at least 63 individuals are thought to have been executed in the past two months alone (since 16 November). There are around 48 crimes for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, including a number of non-fatal crimes.

He continued saying it was particularly worrying was that there was not a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress. The High Commissioner therefore called on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty, he said, noting that around 150 countries have now either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, or introduced a moratorium.

He further pointed to UN General Assembly Resolution 62/149, adopted in 2007, and two subsequent resolutions, which call on Member States to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, with a view to future abolition.

Libya

Asked about the status of Saif al-Islam, the son of the deposed Libyan leader, Colonel Khadaffi, Rupert Colville for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the High Commissioner was to brief the Security Council tomorrow on the general state of the Libyan situation and more information would then be available.

Geneva activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the Conference on Disarmament this morning began the first meeting of its 2012 session, under the presidency of Ecuador and in the presence of the Director-General, who was also the Secretary-General of the Conference . The United States, Morocco, Canada and Peru were on the list of speakers.

She added that the Committee on the Rights of the Child this morning continued its consideration of reports submitted by Togo and was, this afternoon, to look at reports submitted by Thailand. On Thursday, the final report for consideration will be that of the Cook Islands. The Committee had completed its review of reports of Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Madagascar, she said.

A high-level panel debate on the topic of cybersecurity was to be held by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) next Tuesday, added Ms. Momal-Vanian. The panel included the Secretary-General of the ITU, the Executive Director of UNITAR, and the Director of the Division for Treaty Affairs, UNODC.

Marixie Mercado for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said the 2012 Humanitarian Action for Children report would be launched on Friday (27 January) at 11:30 in Room III. The report was the basis of the UNICEF fundraising appeal for emergency operations across the globe, she said. Speakers included the Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and a representative from UNICEF South Sudan. Embargoed copies of the report were at the back of the room.

Tarik Jasarevic for the World Health Organization (WHO) said tomorrow (25 January) at 11:30 in Press Room 1 there would be a background briefing on the WHO technical consultation planned for 31 January – 1 February to discuss the credibility of recent studies which suggested that the use of hormonal contraception, such as oral and injectable methods, increased the risk for women of being infected by HIV. On February 15 the Guidelines Review Committee was to then meet to announce if there was reason to change the guidelines on the use of these contraceptive methods, he said.

He also noted that the Executive Board of the WHO concluded its 130th session yesterday, with a number of resolutions adopted for submission to the World Health Assembly. These were all online, he noted, and included strong support for the continuation of the polio eradication initiative, Board support for the WHO role in emergencies and a request that the Director-General develop a global monitoring framework for communicable and non-communicable diseases (including a set of indicators and voluntary global targets by 2012). Other topics covered included global approaches to mental disorders and World Immunization Week at the end of April.

Finally, he noted that in response to concerns over public health the WHO would convene and facilitate a meeting of experts on 16 and 17 February in Geneva into recent research into the H5N1 virus. The meeting would be closed to media, he said, but briefings would be offered to journalists during the process.

Rupert Colville (OHCHR) introduced Myriam Dessables, the new Head of Communications in the Office of the High Commissioner.