REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, the Director of the UN Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Human Rights Council, the World Meteorological Organization, the Economic Commission for Europe, the International Labour Organization, the World Trade Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Children’s Fund, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration.

Syria

Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the second issue of the Syria Humanitarian Bulletin was available today. The bulletin highlighted that more and more people were leaving their homes, vulnerability was growing and assistance was needed.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent had reported that 350,000 people were now in need of assistance in Idlib Governorate – an increase of 150,000 persons since March. According to the organization, 250,000 people in Homs Governorate also required humanitarian assistance, with two thirds of those in need currently receiving assistance. Overall, up to 1.5 million people were now in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria, and more than 86,000 refugees were now registered in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey according to UNHCR.

In terms of health, the World Health Organization – in collaboration with the Ministry of Health – had conducted a survey of primary health care facilities and public hospitals in seven affected governorates. Of the 38 hospitals surveyed, only 50 per cent were fully functioning.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had received health kits from the UN Refugee Agency to cover the needs of more than 20,000 people, as well as trauma kits that could provide emergency treatment for 300 wounded people.

More than 461,000 people had received food assistance from the World Food Programme as of mid-June, Mr. Laerke went on to say. Food assistance was expected to increase in July, as WFP planned to increase its beneficiaries from 500,000 to 850,000 persons. This would require additional funding as specified in the Syria Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan.

Other UN agencies would distribute basic items to more than 80,000 people by the end of June through the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and other local partners. Families who had relocated due to the fighting were in urgent need of relief items including hygiene kits, mattresses, blankets and other non-food items.

Regarding the presence on the ground, Mr. Laerke said that reconnaissance missions had been completed for UN field presences and humanitarian hubs. Such hubs may initially be established in Homs and Deir-ez-Zor but staff deployment was severely hindered by the security situation.

Marixie Mercado of the UN Children’s Fund said that UNICEF and its partners in Syria had delivered assistance to 115,000 people (including more than 80,000 children) since January, including non-food items and psychosocial support. This did not include UNICEF’s support to the Ministry of Health for the vaccination of over 284,000 children.

Across the region, UNICEF’s response had focused on keeping kids in school or in learning environments, as well as providing psychosocial support and making sure that their basic health needs were being met. While access was an issue, once it did have access, UNICEF intended to undertake significant work to rehabilitate schools, provide psychosocial support to children and make sure that children’s emergency needs were met.

UNICEF required USD 18.8 million of funding for Syria, of which USD 14 million were still missing. The organization’s funding requirement for the regional response plan was USD 7.4 million, with slightly over half received so far. UNICEF’s portion of the regional response plan was intended to reach about 45,000 people.

Asked about the humanitarian pause which had been negotiated to deliver aid to Homs, Mr. Laerke said that some people had been trapped in Homs, unable to leave because of the confrontations. A humanitarian pause negotiated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) may provide an opportunity for civilians to leave and aid to be delivered. According to an ICRC message yesterday, both the ICRC and the Syrian Red Crescent had been unable to enter the old city of Homs yesterday.

Asked how the humanitarian aid agreement with the Syrian Government was working, if at all, Mr. Laerke said that the agreement was on the response plan and specified the humanitarian assistance that could be delivered (where, to whom and what) if conditions allowed. Obviously, because of the security situation, and lack of access, much of that had not kicked off yet. The overall problem was lack of security and access.

South Sudan

Adrian Edwards of the UN Refugee Agency said that UNHCR had on Thursday appealed to donors to urgently provide additional funding for its operations to help Sudanese refugees in South Sudan and neighbouring Ethiopia. Currently there were some 162,500 refugees in South Sudan and 36,500 in Ethiopia. The contributions UNHCR had received for South Sudan had been exhausted.

The situation for refugees in South Sudan was among the most critical UNHCR now faced anywhere. At the time of UNHCR’s initial appeal in January, the organization had planned on the basis of a refugee population in South Sudan not exceeding 135,000 people. However, the sharp surge in arrivals in recent weeks in Upper Nile state in particular had seen this figure being exceeded by nearly 30,000 people, and with arrivals continuing at an average rate of 1,000 a day.

Many of the new arrivals were in desperate condition, and large numbers of children needed urgent intervention to address malnourishment. The UN Refugee Agency was very concerned about the growing mortality rates in the refugee camps and was establishing a baseline survey to gain a better picture of the situation. Water shortages presented a life-threatening risk, particularly for an already substantially weakened population.

Currently UNHCR was not expecting a further dramatic increase in arrivals in Ethiopia and consequently its funding needs there remained unchanged. For South Sudan, however, its new appeal allowed for a refugee population of up to 235,000 people by year’s end. With this revised appeal, UNHCR’s needs for Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia and South Sudan stood at USD 219.9 million. Currently the organization had received USD 45.9 million, representing less than 21 per cent of needs.

Côte d’Ivoire

Mr. Laerke said that a press release was at the back of the room which had already been sent out to the Geneva press corps. The Humanitarian Coordinator in Côte d’Ivoire had visited the border region with Liberia. The number of displaced persons was now estimated at 13,000. According to UN staff on the ground, there was now a timid return movement back to the villages from which people had earlier fled.

Asked to comment on the Ivoirians who had worked for former President Laurent Gbagbo and had now been expelled from several African countries back to Côte d’Ivoire, where they had been jailed without access to lawyers, Mr. Colville said that if people were jailed, there needed to be a court process and an accusation of a crime.

Myanmar

Mr. Laerke said that a situation report on Myanmar was at the back of the room, proving information about food distributions, health interventions and shelter support.

Adrian Edwards of the UN Refugee Agency said that UNHCR was very concerned about reports it was receiving concerning the tense and fragile security situation in the areas affected by the recent violence in Rakhine State. Even though the situation appeared calm, the organization was still getting reports of violence and new displacements.

In the days ahead, anyone fleeing the situation in Myanmar or being pushed back would also face increasingly hazardous and rough seas, with swell heights reaching three to four metres in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal.

Meanwhile, UNHCR aid was reaching affected communities after we re-deployed a team to Sittwe to join other staff members who had remained in Rakhine State throughout the latest events.

The number of people estimated to have been affected by the violence continued to grow, with latest unofficial estimates close to 90,000, including those displaced and those too frightened to leave their homes. Initial estimates were that many could remain displaced for three months or longer.

There were now more than 70 sites for displaced people, including camps and monasteries. UNHCR staff who had visited camps for both displaced communities in Sittwe had found children, women, elderly people and men sleeping on the ground, desperate for heavy tarpaulins, blankets and mosquito nets. The UN Refugee Agency was also concerned about possibility of outbreaks of disease because of poor water supplies and sanitation at a time when it was raining heavily.

Nigeria

Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that OHCHRH was extremely concerned by the wave of violence and killings unleashed by the latest deadly bomb attacks on churches by the Boko Haram group in Nigeria. Since several churches had been attacked by Boko Haram in Kaduna last Sunday (17 June), it was estimated that over a hundred people had been killed, some 30 of them in the initial attacks and subsequent retaliation by Christian youths who set up check points. The rest had reportedly been killed in clashes between the security forces and Muslims protesting at the deadly retaliatory acts by the Christians, and most recently in clashes between the security forces and alleged insurgents in Damaturu.

OHCHR condemned the repeated attacks by Boko Haram on places of worship and on religious freedom, as well as its blatant attempts to stir sectarian tensions and violence between two communities that had lived together peacefully for so long. It encouraged local and national authorities to take effective measures to assist victims. Members of Boko Haram and other groups and entities, if judged to have committed widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population – including on grounds such as religion or ethnicity –, were likely to be found guilty of crimes against humanity. Deliberate acts leading to population “cleansing” on grounds of religion or ethnicity would also amount to a crime against humanity.

OHCHR also urged the authorities to take measures to curb inflammatory or hate-speech and to work with all stakeholders, including civil society and religious leaders, to help deal with this threat. It was encouraging that some religious leaders had been working together to avoid such flare-ups of retaliatory violence. The Anglican Archbishop of Jos, for example, recently made an important statement after some other attacks on churches, urging people to stay calm and saying that reprisals were "futile" and only served to aggravate the situation. OHCHR urged him and other Muslim and Christian leaders to redouble their efforts to contain these extremely dangerous manifestations of religious intolerance and inter-communal violence.

Togo

Mr. Colville said that inflammatory hate speech had also been a problem in Togo, where thinly-veiled threats to foreigners had been made on radio programmes in the wake of protests that had descended into violence at the end of last week. During three days of violence from 12-14 June, more than a hundred protestors, police and bystanders were reported to have been injured, some of them seriously. The OHCHR office in Togo had urged both the authorities and the protestors to refrain from all acts that might endanger people or property, stressing that protests should be conducted in a peaceful manner, and that the authorities should only resort to force if it was both necessary and proportional, and in full conformity with international standards.


Mexico

Mr. Colville said that OHCHR understood that Mexico's new Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists was due to be signed later today by President Calderon. Once this very necessary law had been signed, OHCHR would issue a press release in Mexico welcoming it and looking forward to its effective implementation.

Bolivia

Asked about the occupation of the OHCHR office in La Paz by several MPs – two of whom had announced a hunger strike – Mr. Colville said that one of the three Senators had been taken out in an ambulance after falling ill; she was now at home. Two Senators were still in the office.

The UN Human Rights Office would prefer it if the MPs made their protest in a different way and did not use the OHCHR office for this. It was very disruptive. That being said, OHCHR had also been engaged in some of the issues the MPs were protesting about. OHCHR staff members going in and out of the building and talking to the MPs, who are receiving the basic supplies they needed.

IOM, USAID Launch Expanded HIV Prevention and Care Programme for Migrants and Host Communities in South Africa

Jumbe Omari Jumbe of the International Organization for Migration said that IOM and USAID, with funding from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), were to expand to 2016 the Ripfumelo project addressing HIV vulnerability of farm workers in South Africa's Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces.

The USD 7.1 million Ripfumelo II project, which would cover selected districts in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, aimed to scale up HIV prevention and care interventions for traveling and migrant populations.

More than 20,000 migrants had gained access to health services through the USD 4.6 million Ripfumelo project since it started in 2009. The extension to 2016 would aim to reach more hard-to-reach migrant farm workers and new geographical areas, while accelerating TB and AIDS prevention, counselling and testing.

World Drug Report

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that a press release on 2012 World Drug Report was at the back of the room, under strict embargo until the launch of the report. The report would be presented to the General Assembly on 26 June by Yury Fedotov, Exectuve Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

The World Drug Report provided an annual analysis of global trends in the four main drug markets: opium/heroin, coca/cocaine, cannabis and amphetamine-type stimulants. The latest findings on emerging and established drugs threats would also be presented.

An executive summary of the report was available from the UN Information Service and the press release included the contact details of the UNODC press office.

The message of the Secretary-General on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (26 June) was available at the back of the room.

New report on UN Human Rights treaty bodies

Mr. Colville said that the High Commissioner for Human Rights was today releasing a 100-page report urging states and other parties to take a series of actions to strengthen the UN human rights treaty body system which had been coming under increasing strain in recent years. The report, which had been almost three years in the making, noted that the increase in the number of international human rights treaties, and of the number of states that had ratified each treaty, had not been matched by an increase in resources to allow the Committees monitoring implementation of the treaties to keep pace.

Mr. Colville said that the report could be read or downloaded from www.ohchr.org.

WMO Executive Council

Clare Nullis of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that the WMO Executive Council would hold its annual meeting from 25 June to 3 July to review progress in the provision of critical weather, climate and water services to meet the growing needs of society.

The Council would consider WMO priorities including the Global Framework for Climate Services, which was being developed by WMO and its partners. Other priorities were: enhanced disaster risk reduction; improved observation and information systems; more efficient meteorological services for the aviation sector; and capacity-strengthening in developing countries, said Ms. Nullis.

ILO Agenda

Hans von Rohland of the International Labour Organization (ILO) said that ILO would launch a report entitled “The Eurozone job crisis: trends and policy responses” ahead of the meeting of European leaders next week in Brussels.

The study described the latest job trends in the EU countries and discussed various reforms adopted by Governments.

The report and related documents were embargoed until Monday, 25 June at 8 GMT.

Conference on Disarmament

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Conference on Disarmament would on Tuesday hold its last public meeting before its four-week summer break. The conference would be presided over by France as of next week and until it reconvened. The theme for Tuesday’s meeting was a treaty banning the production of fissile materials.

UNECE Agenda

Jean Rodriguez of the UN Economic Commission for Europe said that a seminar entitled “Recovery, sustainability, and evolution: perspectives on the real estate economy” would start on 26 June in Room V. The detailed programme would be sent to journalists shortly.

A press release welcoming the ratification by Ireland of the Aarhus Convention, its amendment on genetically modified organisms, and its Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Register had been sent to journalists yesterday.

The thirty-seventh meeting of the Compliance Committee of the Aarhus Convention would run from 26-29 June and would examine several cases presented by the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Romania, Kazakhstan and Bulgaria, among others.

WTO Agenda

Ankai Xu of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said that on Monday, 25 June there would be a Dispute Settlement Body meeting in the afternoon and a briefing (time and place to be announced).

On Tuesday and Thursday there would be a trade policy review of Colombia. On Thursday, 28 June would be held a conference to mark the thirtieth anniversary of WTO’s Legal Affairs Division (journalists were invited to participate).

Ms. Xu said that WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy would be in Berlin on Tuesday, 26 June to give a lecture on “Global Governance: multilateralism at a crossroad”. On Wednesday, Mr. Lamy would attend the Annual Conference of the Global Trade Analysis Project. On Thursday, 28 June he would deliver opening remarks at the conference marking the 30th anniversary of the WTO's Legal Affairs Division, and on Friday, 29 he would receive an honorary degree at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Human Rights Council

Rolando Gomez of the Human Rights Council said that the Council was this morning continuing its interactive dialogue with the Working Group on discrimination against women and the Special Rapporteur on human rights of migrants, François Crépeau.

After the lunch break, the Council would be addressed by the Special Rapporteur on cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, who would present her report that covered her missions to Austria and Morocco. The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, would also present her report, which notably covered her missions to Australia and Thailand.

As the Council was slightly running behind schedule, an extra meeting had been scheduled for Monday, said Mr. Gomez. On Wednesday, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria would present an update to the Council at 10 a.m. before briefing journalists at 1.30 p.m. in Room III.

The deadline for the submission of resolutions was now set for 28 June. Then there would be a clear picture of the proposals that would be considered on the last two days of the Council’s current session.

Press conferences

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that Kofi Annan, Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria, and Major-General Robert Mood, head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria and Chief Military Observer, would give a briefing today at 4 p.m. in Room III.

Mr. Gomez said that the Special Rapporteur on human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, would brief journalists at 2 p.m. today in Press Room I on his thematic report on the detention of migrants.

Mr. von Rohland said that there would be a press conference with Raymond Torres, the Director of ILO's International Institute for Labour Studies, on Monday, 25 June at 2.30 p.m. in Press Room 1, in relation to the new ILO report “The Eurozone job crisis: trends and policy responses”.