REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was attended by the Spokespersons for the United Nations Refugee Agency, Interparliamentary Union, International Organization for Migration, World Health Organization, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and the Economic Commission for Europe.

Syria

Melissa Fleming, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), stated that Syria’s intensifying refugee crisis would today surpass a record three million people, amid reports of increasingly horrifying conditions inside the country - cities where populations were surrounded, people were going hungry and civilians were being targeted or indiscriminately killed.

Almost half of all Syrians had now been forced to abandon their homes and flee for their lives. One in every eight Syrians had fled across the border, fully a million people more than a year earlier. A further 6.5 million were displaced within Syria, and over half of those uprooted were children.

Ms. Fleming said that the increasing numbers of families were arriving in a shocking state, exhausted, scared and with their savings depleted. Most had been on the run for a year or more, fleeing from village to village before taking the final decision to leave.

There were worrying signs too that the journey out of Syria was becoming tougher, with many people forced to pay bribes at armed checkpoints proliferating along the borders. Refugees crossing the desert into eastern Jordan were being forced to pay smugglers hefty sums (ranging from USD 100 per person or more) to take them to safety.

The vast majority remained in countries neighbouring Syria, with the highest concentrations in Lebanon (1.14 million), Jordan (608,000) and Turkey (815,000). In addition to the three million registered refugees, Governments estimated that hundreds of thousands more Syrians had sought sanctuary in their countries. That had led to an enormous strain on their economies, infrastructures and resources. More than four in five refugees were struggling to make a living in towns and cities outside of camps, with 38 per cent living in sub-standard shelter, according to a recent survey.

Syrians were now the world’s largest refugee population under UNHCR care, second only in number to the decades-long Palestinian crisis. The Syria operation was the largest in UN Refugee Agency’s 64-year history.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres had stated that the Syrian crisis had become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world was failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them.

A recent upsurge in fighting appeared to be worsening an already desperate situation. As frontlines shifted, new areas were emptying out. Recent arrivals to Jordan, for example, were running from attacks in the areas of Raqaa and Aleppo.

Ms. Fleming said that the UNHCR was also deeply concerned for the wellbeing of several hundred Syrians trapped inside the Al Obaidy refugee camp in Al Qa’im, Iraq, after UN agencies and international NGOs had been forced to abandon their offices and warehouses. UNHCR said that national partners were continuing to provide supplies and maintenance, but the situation was volatile.

Many newly arriving refugees said that they had only left Syria as a last resort. A growing number, including more than half of those coming to Lebanon, had moved at least once before fleeing, and one in ten had moved more than three times.

In addition to worsening security, the latest refugees reported increasing difficulty in finding work, skyrocketing food and commodity prices, and failing services. A packet of bread in one village near the city of Idlib cost ten times more this year than in 2013, according to a new arrival in Jordan.

A growing share of recent arrivals – up to 15 per cent in Jordan, for example - were suffering from long term medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and had left because they were no longer able to get adequate care at home.

UNHCR was working with 150 other agencies and groups, together with the Governments of neighbouring countries, to help refugees pay the rent, and get food, education and medical care, as well as giving basic goods such as tents, mattresses and plastic sheeting.

Ms. Fleming specified that, in the previous year alone, 1.7 million refugees had received food aid, 350,000 children had been enrolled in school, and shelter in camps had been provided for more than 400,000 refugees. Since the beginning of the crisis in 2011, UNHCR had registered refugees faster than at any time in its history.

While donors had contributed more than USD 4.1 billion to successive regional response plans since 2012, more than 2 billion more was needed by the end of 2014 alone to meet the urgent needs of refugees. Most urgently, more than 2.4 million people were expected to need support in the coming weeks to prepare for the upcoming winter.

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), stated that the previous day the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Kyung-wha Kang, had briefed the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria, a little more than six months after the Council had unanimously adopted resolution 2139 on 22 February 2014. Resolution 2139 aimed at pressing the parties to the conflict to abide by basic international legal obligations and to reduce the suffering of ordinary people.

Mr. Laerke said that, instead, the opposite had happened: the violence and the conflict continued unabated, with more women, children and men dying; more than 191,000 had lost their lives since the beginning of the conflict. Even that high number was considered a conservative estimate with the real death toll likely to be much higher.

The advance of Islamic militants (IS) into central Syria had taken violence against civilians to a whole new level as the group continued to commit horrific atrocities against those opposing its rule. There had also been an increase in the use of barrel bombs by Government forces in Aleppo while Islamist militants had cut off the water supply to an area for displaced people, also in Aleppo, on several occasions. That kind of collective punishment was clearly a breach of some of the most basic principles in international humanitarian law.

Overall, nearly 11 million people were in need of aid in Syria and 4.7 million of them lived in areas that were hard to reach. There were still some 241,000 under siege in various locations. There had, however, been some improvement in humanitarian access as a result of Security Council Resolution 2165 of 14 July, which authorized UN humanitarian agencies to use routes across conflict lines and across specific border points from Turkey, Jordan and Iraq to bring in humanitarian aid.

Mr. Laerke informed that the UN had now sent nine shipments to Syria from neighbouring countries, including seven shipments from Turkey and two from Jordan. More were planned over the following month. He said that Ms. Kang had told the Security Council that there had also been new openings in access across conflict lines in Aleppo, Dar’a and Rural Damascus Governorates, including to besieged areas. Medical supplies had reached a number of opposition-held areas this month, mostly through cross-line access.

However, much more needed to be done by the parties to ensure that access to all civilians in need is rapid, regular, safe, and unhindered. The response plan for Syria was covered 30 per cent.

On whether neighbouring countries still kept their border opened to Syrian refugees, Ms. Fleming responded that the neighbouring countries had been incredibly generous. Lebanese borders were open, while the borders of Jordan and Turkey were managed, which meant that arrivals were screened for legitimate security concerns. Iraq’s borders in the Anbar Province were closed, and were not managed by the Government of Iraq. Some 300 Syrians were returning from Iraq to Syria every day; some Iraqis were fleeing to Syria, which was a sign of how bad the situation in Iraq was.

Answering a question, Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Secretary-General had been clear in stressing that the situation was alarming in Iraq and Syria and that the international community ought to act. It was up to the Security Council to decide on the course of action.

Iraq

Ms. Momal-Vanian reminded that the Special Session of the Human Rights Council on Iraq would take place in Room XX on Monday, 1 September. The session would commence at 10 a.m. Additional details would be sent out in the course of the day.

Christiane Berthiaume, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that according to the latest figures compiled by IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix, there were over 1.6 million people that had been internally displaced in 1,577 locations across Iraq since the beginning of the year, following unrest in Anbar and in the North of the country. Over 850,858 people had been displaced since the fighting had broken out in the northern part of the country. Ms. Berthiaume added that most of the displaced had found refuge in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and in the adjacent districts of Ninewa and Diyala.

The IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix was the instrument that allowed to know where the refugees were and what their needs were. The IOM provided the entire humanitarian community with such information so that adequate help could be provided.

Ms. Berthiaume said that the situation in Iraq was a crisis unparalleled for the whole humanitarian community, as those people moved very often. Families were telling the IOM of their long journeys from the beginning of the hostilities from Mosul to Sinjar City, then to the Sinjar Mountains, across Syria and back into Iraq via the Feshkapour border crossing, finally landing in various locations across the Dahok Governorate. Most now lived in schools, churches, mosques, parks and in unfinished apartment buildings with no water or electricity.

The IOM had distributed non-food item kits including kerosene cooking stoves, large water coolers, kitchen sets, floor mats, mattresses, bedding and reported that many families had not eaten for a long time. There were a lot of people who suffered from psychological problems because they had witnessed tragedies and needed medium and long term psychological support.

Ms. Berthiaume highlighted that ,thanks to the IOM donors which included the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the US, Japan, Sweden, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the European Union, the IOM could distribute some 60,000 non-food item kits and 10,000 tents, while also addressing health and mental health needs among the IDPs through mobile health clinics and by supporting existing local health infrastructure.

Mr. Laerke said that the UN was supporting the national Government of Iraq and the northern regional authorities in delivering emergency life-saving aid and was scaling up aid efforts to stabilize the situation in northern Iraq.

Key humanitarian priorities in northern Iraq were shelter, food, clean water and sanitation, and medical assistance. The number one priority was finding dignified shelter for those in need.

Mr. Laerke said that over 10,000 families had arrived in Khanaqin (Diyala Governorate) in the previous two weeks, fleeing ongoing conflict throughout Diyala. The Government of Kurdistan and the humanitarian community were working closely together on a consolidated plan for the coming month to address the key priorities for helping people in need of assistance.

Protection remained a critical issue and hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians could not access humanitarian assistance due to insecurity, especially in Anbar and northern Iraq.

Regarding shelter as a priority, and how much more needed to be done, Ms. Fleming stressed that it was an urgent need at the moment. While there were some established IDP camps across Iraq, there were many other places where the displaced persons were living. Some of them were being moved to camps. UNHCR had pitched more than 10,000 tents across the country over the previous few weeks. Should large numbers continue to arrive, the situation would become ever more challenging. It was Ms. Fleming’s understanding that the UNHCR deliveries were still rolling in, by road via Iran and Turkey. Non-food items and other supplies that people needed were also brought in. Ms. Fleming added that the UNHCR was sometimes providing cash assistance, and not exclusively tents.

Mr. Laerke emphasized that there were many agencies responding to the urgent needs. The Government of Kurdistan was also helping with coordinating response.

Answering a question about people on the Sinjar mountain, Mr. Laerke said that it appeared that most people had made it off the mountain safely. Those who had left were now receiving aid, as they were in bad mental and physical shape.

Regarding whether there were any positive responses from Western countries to receive IDPs from Iraq, Ms. Fleming said there was no resettlement programme at the moment. The focus now was on responding to their imminent, acute needs.

Ebola

Tarik Jasarevic, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said that on 5 September, a meeting would take place of international experts on potential Ebola therapies and vaccines, potential risks and benefits, uses and barriers for various options. Following that expert meeting, on 5 September in the afternoon, a press conference would take place at the WHO. More information would be shared the following week and filming for journalists could be arranged.

Answering a question, Mr. Jasarevic specified that the meeting would look into the existing experimental projects. Transparency and data sharing were of utmost importance, so a decision was expected on how to share data in the most effective manner.

On the testing of vaccines, the WHO’s position was that the minimum of security was necessary. The role of the WHO was to confer medical experts in the field and provide recommendations.

Mr. Jasarevic confirmed that the number of known cases thus far stood at 3,069. Responding to a question, Mr. Jasarevic said that the infected Senegalese WHO staff member was currently under treatment, and it was hoped that he would recover.

He added that the latest situation report had been just sent out.

Libya

Ms. Berthiaume said that, following the previous weekend’s tragedies, more than 4,000 people had been rescued by the Italian Mare Nostrum operation. The figures were increasing and the IOM was concerned about the situation in Libya, which was deteriorating and could push more and more migrants to take that, far too dangerous, route in order to escape ongoing fighting in the Libyan capital.

Ms. Berthiaume said there had always been an important population of migrants in Libya. This was a big country with a small population and rich in oil, which thus had always relied on migration to maintain its economic activities.

Ms. Berthiaume said that displaced migrants trapped in Tripoli had been hit particularly hard. On 22 August, ten Sudanese had been killed when a stray missile destroyed a house in Tripoli’s Karmiya district. The situation of migrants in detention centres was also deteriorating. There were 18 detention centres for migrants, normally hosting between 4,000 to 6,000 people. Most of them were operational, but were experiencing shortages of cooking gas, water and food. Some had released migrants, as they could no longer afford to provide adequate food and sanitation. Therefore, they were staying in Tripoli, facing a dangerous situation.

IOM staff had also identified some 2,000 Pakistanis who had found refuge in a school in central Tripoli. They were staying in an overcrowded building, without food and medicine and were anxious to be repatriated. IOM and the Libyan Red Crescent were working to improve sanitation at the site and arranging the delivery of food, water and hygiene kits. IOM was also working with the Ethiopian Embassy in Cairo to provide travel documents and help a number of Ethiopian women detained in a detention centre for women to return home. It had also received requests from Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam to help their citizens leave Libya.

For the previous six weeks, Tripoli had seen important fighting, including indiscriminate shelling of the main airport and surrounding areas. The increasing use of heavy artillery and missiles had caused an unknown number of casualties, many of them civilians. Insecurity was also preventing IOM’s 25 staff in Tripoli from moving freely. Many frequently had to work from home.

Ms. Berthiaume added that the Libyan authorities had reported that some 50,000 people had been forced to leave their homes and to move on safer areas in and around Tripoli. Many displaced families were living with local communities or in shelters provided by the Libyan Red Crescent. Their most pressing needs included medicine, food and hygiene kits. If the situation continued to deteriorate, they would also need shelter, cooking utensils, sanitation facilities, and psychosocial support according to IOM Tripoli staff.

Answering a question about Sub-Saharan migrants, Ms. Berthiaume said that there were still many of them in the country trying to leave by sea. Some of them were still there, including the 15,000 Sudanese nationals.

Regarding the EU support to Italy, Ms. Berthiaume said that collective efforts were needed to solve the issue of deaths in the Mediterranean and noted that Mare Nostrum cost about a 12 million euros per month.

UNECE participation in the World Water Week

Jean Rodriguez, for the Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), stated that the UNECE would showcase the achievements under its Water Convention at a variety of events organized during the World Water Week that would be held from 31 August to 5 September 2014 in Stockholm.

Every year, the World Water Week, organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), provided a key forum to promote the important progress achieved under the UNECE Water Convention, from adaptation measures to climate change, to applying the river basin approach to the shared management of resources amongst neighbouring countries, or from dam safety in Central Asia to access to water and sanitation.

Following the entry into force on 17 August 2014 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses and the global opening of the UNECE Water Convention, a seminar organized by the UNECE on 31 August together with numerous governments and organizations would discuss how the joint implementation of the two international instruments could support trans-boundary water cooperation worldwide.

Mr. Rodriguez said that this year the World Water Week’s theme was dedicated to water and energy. Water, energy and land systems were inter-connected and had become increasingly complex and dependent on one another. Understanding the drivers behind these interlinkages, the so-called “nexus”, was crucial when designing water, energy or agricultural projects. For example, the nexus approach could help increase the benefits from hydropower projects and enhance sustainable resource utilization while avoiding or minimizing potential negative side-effects. Applying the nexus in a trans-boundary basin was even more complex. The first results of the thematic assessment of the Water-Food-Energy-Ecosystems Nexus carried out by UNECE and partners in a number of trans-boundary basins would be presented in Stockholm.

More information could be accessed via the following link: http://www.unece.org/env/water/www-2014_stockholm.html

International conference on the role of transport and transit corridors

Mr. Rodriguez stated that the role of transport and transit corridors in ensuring international cooperation, stability and sustainable development would be discussed at a high-level international conference in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on 3-4 September. The event would be organized by the Government of Turkmenistan, in collaboration with the UNECE, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the International Road Transport Union.

UNECE Executive Secretary Christian Friis Bach would deliver one of the opening addresses, highlighting some of the key contributions that the UNECE was making to develop sustainable transport and transit corridors in the region. Those included, among others: the Euro-Asian Transport Links project, which had identified 9 rail and 9 road routes that could offer quicker and cheaper alternatives to sea fare between Europe and Asia, once proper infrastructures and border crossing procedures were in place; international legal instruments to facilitate the transit of goods across borders, such as the 1982 Harmonization Convention or the 1975 TIR Convention; ongoing efforts to develop a unified railway regulatory framework to expedite rail border crossings between regions and to improve the competitiveness of international rail freight services; or United Nations Road safety Conventions developed and administered by the UNECE.

High-level participants, Ministers, Deputies and other high ranking representatives of international organizations and participating countries would discuss the role of transport and transit corridors in fostering economic development and strengthening international cooperation. Financing mechanisms, policy and technical obstacles to closer integration as well as facilitation measures which could promote faster integration of national economies and transport systems in the global economy would also be addressed.

Mr. Rodriguez added that the conference would also consider how transport transit corridors contribute to economic, social and environmentally sustainable development, as well as strategies and policy coordination needed to maximize the benefits of seamless transport services. The focus would be on how to enhance the overall sustainability of transit transport corridors and improved connectivity.

Further information could be found on the following website: http://www.turkmenistan-conference.com/

UN Conference on Small Island Developing States

Muriel Scibilia, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), informed that the Secretary-General of UNCTAD would participate in the UN Conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa, in the context of the plenary but also within a series of parallel activities. The first activity would concern the situation of the Small Island Developing States in accordance with their position in the ranking of the poorest countries’ category, which Samoa had recently left. The question was whether, despite the fact that certain states managed to leave the category of the poorest countries, UNCTAD should pay supplementary attention to the States in order to help them ensure a smooth transition. Another parallel activity would take place concerning the ocean economy. That was a new concept of particular importance in the context of the Small Island Developing States given that the oceans were a source with a colossal potential, be it in terms of food, energy, absorption of greenhouse gases or oxygen production. She explained that the current question was how to exploit this potential in a sustainable manner. UNCTAD was in the process of publishing a study, not yet ready in a hard copy but available on the website, made with the secretariat of the Commonwealth to examine the problematic of the oceans’ potential and the manner to exploit them the best without destroying more the global ecological space.

Geneva activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian informed that the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination would present its concluding observations on the states considered in the current session - El Salvador, United States, Peru, Cameroun, Iraq, Japan, and Estonia. The press conference would take place at 2 p.m. today in Press Room I.

The Committee on the Rights of Migrants would hold its session at the Palais Wilson the following week, from 1 to 5 September, during which it would consider reports of Belize and Ghana.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child would commence its three-week long session on 1 September, during which it would consider reports of Croatia, Fiji, Hungary, Venezuela, Morocco and Singapore. A background release had been distributed the previous day.

The Conference on Disarmament would hold a public session at 10 a.m. on 2 September.

Ms. Scibilia announced that on 1 September the first ever report on incidents of commercial policies on poverty, a new exercise carried out by UNCTAD, would be launched. The report "Trade Policies, Household Welfare and Poverty Alleviation : Case Studies from the Virtual Institute Academic Network" had been produced by policy makers who had been working with researchers to try to understand which were the latest measures and evolutions’ consequences in the commercial field on alleviation or worsening of poverty, in particular the increase in certain commodities as well as the questions on exchange rates. The report would be presented by Richard Kozul-Wright, Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies at UNCTAD, and Vlasta Macku, Chief of the Virtual Institute. The Virtual Institute had been launched some ten years ago by UNCTAD; it was an instrument enabling to train policy makers, aiming primarily the academic world, in order to help them improve their skills in analysis of commercial policies. The current network of the Virtual Institute consisted of some hundred universities all over the world.

Ms. Scibilia also announced that a press conference would be held on the report on UNCTAD assistance to Palestine on 3 September at 10.30 a.m. She said that the analysis on the economic situation of the territories in their entirety could be found on UNCTAD’s website and it had been completed before July’s fighting. At the press conference, the person in charge of the report, Mr. Mahmoud El-Jafari, would provide an update reflecting the events of the past few weeks.

On 1 or 2 September, UNCTAD would publish the last Global Investment Trends Monitor newsletter.

Mr. Jasarevic announced a press briefing on 4 September at 11 a.m. on the first ever WHO report on suicide prevention, bringing together 10 years of research from countries around the world. Over 800,000 people died by suicide every year: around one person every 40 seconds and some 75,000 of suicides occurred in lower-income countries. Pesticide, poisoning, hanging, and fire arms were among the most common matters of suicide globally. Evidence showed that suicide was preventable. Mr. Jasarevic said that limiting access to these means could help prevent people dying by suicide as the commitment by national governments through the establishment and implementation of coordinated plan of actions.

Only twenty-eight countries were currently known to have national suicide prevention strategies. Suicide occurred all over the world and took place in any age. Globally, suicide rates were highest in people aged 70 and over. However, in some countries the highest rate was found among the young: suicide was notably the second leading cause of death among 15-29 year-old age group globally.

Jemini Pandya, for the Interparliamentary Union (IPU), announced that on 4-5 September the 9^th Meeting of Women Speakers of the Parliament would take place in Geneva, at the IPU Headquarters. Ms. Pandya explained that it was an annual event not open to the press because it was the only space where women speakers of the Parliament would have a chance to meet and talk frankly about issues. This year, the meeting would be focused on economic empowerment of women and how particularly they as a political leaders could take a great role in moving ahead on that issue. This was an opportunity for journalists to reach women politicians to whom normally they did not have access to, highlighting the new Speaker of the Indian Parliament and the Speaker of the Parliament of Rwanda, the only country in the world which had a two-third majority of women in the Parliament.

Ms. Pandya also drew the attention on the launch of an exhibition on the Quai Wilson on 1 September. The exhibition, which would last until 19 October, was organized on the occasion of the 125^th anniversary of Inter-Parliamentary Union, and was an opportunity to inform, educate as well as entertain the public about the IPU and democracy. It included cartoons by the cartoonist Barrigue who took on various aspects on what makes a democratic parliament.

The representatives of the International Labour Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund also attended the briefing, but did not brief.
The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/1qM0qIr