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 High Commissioner for Refugees, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the International Organization for Migration, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the World Health Organization.

Sahel

Momodou Lamin Fye for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said several countries in the Sahel region (including Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal) were again experiencing food insecurity due to poor harvests caused by a combination of failed rains, pest attacks and localised flooding.

The International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies estimated that between 10 and 14 million people were currently affected, but that the number could climb as high as 23 million if the crisis was not averted quickly. The Sahel region had often seen cycles of drought, he said, and was plagued by high rates of poverty and very high rates of malnutrition with children and rural areas being particularly vulnerable.

Exacerbating these conditions were refugees fleeing violence in northern Mali and other localised violence, prices in the region rising by between 35 per cent and 85 per cent over the past five years, cross border tensions affecting trade and rapid population growth, he explained.

In recent months the IFRC had posted a number of appeals for the local population, and current priorities were distributing food aid, access to clean water, sanitation, providing basic health care and preventing disease outbreak, he said. Programmes were also looking at long-term solutions which enable people to keep their own crops and livestock.

However, the IFRC was concerned that the emerging humanitarian crisis in the Sahel was underfunded because, as was the case in the Horn of Africa, early warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe are going unheeded. The amount of funding currently pledged was well below what was needed, he continued, and this was in a part of the world that was already much neglected. More information of the needs in each country and why they were at risk was available on the OCHA website, he added.

Gaëlle Sévenier for the World Food Programme (WFP) said the drought in Sahel had brought on a food crisis for millions of people in the region, the third in a decade. The repeated nature of these droughts meant that communities had less and less time to recover from each, she said, making it more difficult for them to sustain themselves.

For this reason the WFP was working on programmes to feed eight million people and stop the situation from degrading further. It had therefore bought food stocks and had specialized staff on the ground before the crisis peaked to ensure that food was available to the most vulnerable, being women and infants.

Country by country she said the WFP was providing aid to 1.95 million people in Chad, 1.1 million in Mali, 690,000 in Senegal, 770,000 in Burkina Faso, 500,000 in Mauritania and 194,000 in Cameroon,. Cereal prices in the region were considerably elevated, she explained, with a shortage of staple ingredients.

Ms. Sévenier also noted that the WFP was hosting a meeting of heads of humanitarian agencies and donor governments in Rome tomorrow (15 February) to address the urgent need for a scaling up of humanitarian assistance in the region.

Elisabeth Byrs for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) added that the heads of OCHA and UNDP would visit Niger this week.

Answering a question on funding Ms. Momal-Vanian said that international agencies across the region had called for more than $720 million to support national efforts to respond to the crisis, and to date donors had provided $135 million. Many more resources were still needed, she added. She also said that the region was one which had been hit by many crises, and security in the region was making access more difficult, which had magnified the most recent problems. The return of hundreds of thousands of people from regional conflict zones, as well as disturbances in trade and remittances also had an impact.

Adrian Edwards for the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said his agency was working with governments in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania to relocate refugees fleeing Mali to safer locations away from border areas.

In northern Niger there had been reports of significant new arrivals, he explained, and although confirmed figures were not available until registration was set up, estimates were in the multiples of thousands. These people were living in makeshift shelters, facing extremes of heat by day and cold at night, he added, and although the health situation was relatively stable there were incidences of malaria, eye infection, diarrhea and respiratory infection. In addition, the sanitation and clean water situation was inadequate.

A site had been identified to set up a camp near Ouallam town, he explained, which would allow refugees to be moved from border areas. Answering questions he said no incidents of cross-border violence had yet been reported, but it was considered best to put distance between those fleeing and regions of some instability.

In Burkina Faso, according to the authorities, 8,000 people have entered the country so far, and were now mainly in the North. Many are women and children and lack everything, in particular food, water and shelter. The government has asked UNHCR to help with the relocation of thousands of these refugees from spontaneous settlements in the north of the country, to two sites in Goudebo and Ingani, further away from the border, he explained.

Meanwhile, in Mauritania over 13,000 people had arrived in the past two weeks and a UNHCR site planner was working with the Mauritanian authorities and local NGOs to prepare a camp in M’Bera, 50 kilometres from the border.

UNHCR staff were now on site in all three countries, and planning for registration was underway, he said.

Syria

Rupert Colville for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that world leaders had, in 2005, given unanimous backing to the concept of the Responsibility to Protect. This meant that states have prime responsibility to protect their own citizens from serious crimes, for example war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

If a state was unable to do that, or was committing the crime itself, then the onus was on the international community to step in to protect the endangered civilians, he explained.

Answering questions he said only the Security Council could refer Syria to the International Criminal Court.

South Sudan and Sudan

Jumbe Omari Jumbe for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that while the IOM welcomed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Sudan and South Sudanese authorities regarding the organized and voluntary return of South Sudanese citizens from the North, the 8 April deadline imposed would represent a massive logistical challenge to both governments and to the international community.

The estimated 500,000 South Sudanese, who were still residing in the Republic of Sudan, seven months after South Sudan declared independence, would be required to leave the north upon the expiry of the deadline or regularize their stay, he explained. Out of that number, about 120,000 had already been registered by UNHCR and was ready to depart, though exact figures were unclear and could be higher. The movement of such large numbers by April was impossible, he said.

The organization had conveyed these concerns to the governments involved when advice was sought and it had hoped that an extension to the deadline beyond the current 8th April would be included in the agreement.

In addition, there were more than 11,000 South Sudanese returnees currently stranded at Kosti way station in the north, waiting for transport to the South.

Answering questions he said the agreement by the two parties addressed the modalities of repatriation, the issue of security of the returnees on the road and at the borders, and limited the personal effects that returnees were allowed to carry. This limit, of up to 40 kilos, was imposed as the amount of personal items being taken by those in transit had caused delays in some cases, and it was thought that people should have priority over goods in these situations. Personal items above this amount could be transported later, he said.

Madagascar

Marixie Mercado for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said she had spoken to the UNICEF country office in Madagascar where tropical cyclone Giovanna had touched down last night and heard reports that conditions were clearing up a little, but the storm remained very strong. Assessment teams had not gone out yet as it was still considered too dangerous, though the national disaster teams and the humanitarian agencies hoped to carry out assessments this afternoon (14 February).

The storm was expected to have hit just south of the coastal port of Toamasina, which she described as a populated area which could have suffered a great deal of damage. UNICEF had prepositioned help for 100,000 people, she said, and staff were also in place along the route the storm was expected to take. Children made up half the population of Madagascar, she highlighted, and half of those were malnourished. There were low levels of access to water and sanitation on the island.

Yemen and Niger

Elisabeth Byrs for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that more than 6,000 people had been affected by ongoing violence in the south of Yemen, and were dependent on humanitarian actors for protection, water and sanitation. These facts were based on preliminary findings from a rapid needs assessment in Taiz in December 2011, she said.

The rate of malnutrition in Yemen remained extremely worrying, she continued, and the number of malnourished children under the age five had nearly doubled as a result of political turmoil during 2011. The figure now stood at 750,000, with half a million at risk of dying this year if adequate support was not provided.

In addition, the education of thousands of children across the country continued to be disrupted by the occupation of schools by armed forces and armed groups. And the volatile security situation continues to pose a challenge to humanitarian operations. In this context, approximately 7,000 new IDPs had fled their homes in Hajjah in the last two weeks and new displacement continued to be reported.

On a positive note, she said that delivery capacity had increased through the registration of additional international NGOs, including the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and ACTED.

On the topic of funding she said the Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan requested $447 million, and was currently 14 per cent funded at $63 million. Germany had contributed $31 million of this.

H5N1

Fadéla Chaib for the World Health Organization (WHO) gave more details of the upcoming meeting on recent research into a more easily transmittable version of the H5N1 bird flu virus saying it would be held Thursday and Friday at WHO headquarters in Geneva, from 9:30 to 5:30 and would be closed to the public and media.

Video footage for journalists would be available through a member of her team, she said, and a virtual press conference would be held Friday at 18:00, at the end of the meeting. A transcript giving full details of the questions and responses from the press conference would also be issued very shortly after and the report of the meeting would be available on the WHO website a week later.

Angolan refugees

Jumbe Omari Jumbe for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that the IOM, in partnership with UNHCR, had resumed the provision of voluntary return assistance to 53,370 Angolan refugees scheduled to be repatriated this year. This was from a total number of 176,000 persons still in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia, Namibia, Republic of Congo and Botswana, almost ten years since the end of the civil war in Angola.

As many as 600,000 people fled the country during the Angolan civil war which ended in 2002, he continued, and the return programme had been halted several times since then due to a combination of lack of funds, post-election tensions in the DRC and other logistical challenges.

In order to assist the remaining Angolans who wish to return to their country safely, humanely and with dignity, IOM had appealed for $14,297,624 to cover its operations in Angola, the DRC and Zambia for year 2012. To date, only $4,530,296 had been received, he said.

Geneva activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the Conference on Disarmament met this morning to hear a statement from Mr. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Secretary General of the Conference on Disarmament and Personal Representative of the Secretary General of the UN. The text of this was to be distributed as soon as possible after delivery.

She continued saying the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination began its work yesterday and was to today (14 February) examine the report on Mexico. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women also opened its session yesterday and this morning began its consideration of the report of Algeria. It would also consider those of Brazil, Congo, Grenada, Jordan, Norway and Zimbabwe during this session.

To conclude, she reminded those attending that Mr. Tokayev was to open a temporary exhibition tonight in the League of Nations Museum on “Fashioning Future History.” The exhibition marked the 80th Anniversary of the World Disarmament
Conference and would run between the 14 February and 31 July.

Fadéla Chaib for the World Health Organization (WHO) said the Guidelines Review Committee would meet on Thursday and she would enquire about organizing a press conference on any new advice offered about the use of hormonal contraceptives for women.