REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was attended by the spokespersons for the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the World Food Programme.

Update on the International Labour Conference

Rosalind Yarde, for the International Labour Organization (ILO), said that there would be a number of high-level visits during the International Labour Conference on 19 and 20 June, specifically, the King of Lesotho and the Vice-President of Cuba (morning of 19 June); the Prime Minister of Portugal, the Vice-President of Namibia, the President of Colombia, the Prime Minister of Barbados and the Vice-President of Costa Rica (afternoon of 19 June); and the President of the Marshall Islands and the King of the Belgians (morning of 20 June). The Prime Minister of Portugal would give a short press conference in Hall 14, on 19 June, at 4.10 p.m. Speech times were available on the web. Security arrangements similar to those of the previous week would be in place. On Friday, 21 June, the United Nations Secretary-General would arrive at 09.30 a.m. and would speak at 10. There were no plans for a stake-out.

A draft convention on violence and harassment in the workplace would be discussed and voted on in a plenary meeting to be held on Friday, 21 June, from around 10.30 a.m. The draft convention would require a two-thirds majority to be adopted. There would be an electronic vote, section by section, with the results shown on a screen. An outcome was expected by midday. The draft for discussion would be published on the web in advance. Paper copies would be distributed on the morning of 21 June. A short press conference was planned for after the vote, at around 1 p.m., in Hall 14, with the Director-General of ILO, Guy Ryder, and the President of the International Labour Conference, Jean-Jacques Elmiger.

The conclusions of the Centenary Declaration and Committee on the Application of Standards would be discussed in an afternoon plenary meeting, adopted by unanimity but not a vote. The drafts of both sets of conclusions would be published in advance on the web with paper copies to be distributed on the morning of Friday, 21 June.

Also on Friday, 21 June, photographers and videographers would be able to access the plenary floor. The fifth floor gallery would be open to a limited number of videographers on the same day. The sixth floor press gallery would be open to media, as would Room XVI, where a live feed would be available.

Internally displaced persons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Babar Baloch, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), made the following statement:

“Violence in north-eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is reported to have displaced more than 300,000 since early June. The situation in Ituri Province has deteriorated since the middle of last week, with multiple attacks involving the Hema and Lendu groups. Inter-ethnic attacks between the two communities had already led to widespread displacement in late 2017 and early 2018, but the situation had calmed.

Large-scale displacement is reported in three of Ituri’s five administrative territories: Djugu, Mahagi and Irumu. People are fleeing attacks and counter attacks in Djugu Territory, with reports of both communities forming self-defence groups and being involved in revenge killings. The estimates have been received from local sources in 125 locations. UNHCR and other humanitarian actors do not at present have access to most of the affected areas.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, fears this escalation could engulf large parts of the province. We are gravely concerned for the safety of civilians after receiving reports of killings, kidnappings, maiming and sexual violence being unleashed against people.

The majority of the displaced have sought shelter with the host communities. Some 30,000 arrived in existing displacement sites where conditions were already dire, with many needs including shelter and health. Military operations are currently reported to be underway in Djugu territory to bring the situation under control.

UNHCR with its partners is working with the authorities to get a clearer picture as the displaced are in urgent need of shelter, basic household items and food. People are now sleeping in the open or in public buildings, with the biggest concentration of displaced people being 10,000 sleeping in or near the church in Drodro, Djugu Territory, without any viable assistance.

Nearly 20,000 people have reached Ituri’s provincial capital, Bunia. Efforts are underway to identify suitable sites around the city. Many more people are trying to get to the relative safety of sites near Bunia but are reportedly blocked by armed youth from both ethnic groups. Others are trying to cross Lake Albert to Uganda.

The humanitarian response is already over-stretched in this part of DRC with a series of other emergencies in the north-eastern region, and volatile security situation with little funding being available. Just south of Ituri, in North Kivu province, UNHCR has recently began an emergency response for nearly 100,000 displaced people in Nobili, near the border with Uganda.

DRC has an estimated 4.5 million internally displaced people. New displacement has been observed lately primarily in the eastern provinces, including Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.”

Alessandra Vellucci, for the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, referring to the noon briefing on 17 June 2019 by the Secretary-General’s spokesperson, said that to support Congolese efforts to address the deteriorating security situation, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) had reinforced its presence in the area with the deployment of three temporary military bases in the Djugu and Mahagi territories. MONUSCO had also deployed teams in the field to assess the situation and was engaging communities and the authorities to help prevent more attacks and to stabilize the situation.

Responding to questions from the press, Mr. Baloch, for UNHCR, said that access to the areas affected by the violence had been drastically reduced. As displacement continued, there were concerns that more people would seek safety in Uganda. The Government of DRC was trying to bring the situation under control. UNHCR was working with the authorities in Ituri to meet the immense needs of the people there. The rivalry between the two groups at the origin of the recent violence dated back at least two decades, and violent incidents had occurred periodically since then.

Asked about the potential impact of the violence on the Ebola epidemic in the country, Tarik Jašareviæ, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said it was not clear that the violence in Ituri province would have any impact the Ebola outbreak in other parts of DRC. One case had been reported in Bunia; however, it did not suggest a link between the violence and the evolution of the outbreak. That being said, the mobility of the population in North Kivu and Ituri was a risk factor, as it made it more difficult to do contact tracing and follow-up activities.

Responding to a question about the overall figures for the Ebola outbreak in DRC, Mr. Jašareviæ, for WHO, said that there had been a total of 2,168 cases, including, 1,449 deaths. In Ituri province, there had been a total of 211 cases, including 124 deaths. The majority of cases were from Mandima, which had been one of the hotspots at the beginning of the outbreak.

Series of shipwrecks off the coast of Venezuela

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), made the following statement:

“More than 80 Venezuelans have died or disappeared in the Caribbean Sea the past two months in three shipwrecks reported by NTN24 and other media outlets and confirmed by the Venezuelan authorities. The first boat capsized on 23 April and the second on 16 May, both heading towards Trinidad and Tobago, and an estimated 51 to 67 Venezuelan refugees and migrants disappeared in these two disasters. The third boat, headed to Curaçao, disappeared on 8 June. At least twenty-one Venezuelans are still missing, with total losses rising possibly to 32.

According to testimonies of survivors and relatives of the missing Venezuelans, these trips are organized by smugglers. Migrant smugglers take advantage of the Venezuelans’ desperate search for better living conditions to sell these trips in heavily overloaded vessels, unsuitable for passenger transport in open sea.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) deeply regrets the deaths and disappearances of so many Venezuelan nationals,” said Marcelo Pisani, IOM Regional Director for Central America, North America and the Caribbean. “These unfortunate incidents highlight the desperate measures Venezuelans are willing to take to reach their destinations, even risking their lives at the hands of smugglers.”

The most recent vessel that sank had set sail clandestinely from the town of Aguide, which is in Venezuela’s Falcón state.

Considering that smuggling networks operate in cross-border settings, it becomes necessary that we all work in a coordinated manner. Cooperation between countries becomes essential for the provision of a comprehensive response,” Pisani added.

These irregular routes and smuggler-provided services put Venezuelans in situations of additional vulnerability in which they can become victims of all types of abuse and exploitation. They pay high prices without a guarantee of their safety or arrival to their destination. In many cases the trips are made in boats that surpass their transport capacity, making them likely to capsize.

Today, more than ever, there is a need for a regional perspective to combat smuggling in the case of the Venezuelan mixed flow. This is very well reflected also in significant increase in migratory flows throughout the Caribbean,” Pisani added.

More than 4 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have left their country since 2015. Over 110,000 of them reside in the Caribbean.”

Babar Baloch, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), made the following statement:

“As Venezuelans continue to use dangerous sea routes to leave their country, UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, is calling for more coordinated search and rescue efforts to prevent further loss of life. It is also absolutely vital that people are able to access safe territory in ways that do not require them to lose their lives. UNHCR is also urging governments in the region to adopt a coordinated approach to tackle the exploitation, abuse and violence experienced by people traveling irregularly.

Responding to questions from journalists, Mr. Millman, for IOM, said that, under international maritime law, all vessels were obligated to respond to distress.

Asked for statistics regarding the Venezuelans attempting to migrate via the sea route, Mr. Millman, for IOM, said that one of the challenges in measuring risk and fatalities was that those Venezuelans who managed to cross successfully usually disappeared without a trace into their new lives abroad. It was mainly tragic events, such as shipwrecks, that provided some idea of the numbers and types of migrants involved. Due to the challenges of collecting information about those people and the contexts of their deaths, the true number of lives lost during migration was likely higher.

Responding to further questions from the press, Mr. Baloch, for UNHCR, said that as an increasing number of Venezuelans were being forced to flee, a likewise increasing number were taking additional risks. It was therefore very important for countries to which Venezuelans were fleeing to grant them access to their territories, as well as to provide search and rescue services and to help boats in distress.

Update on migrant deaths in the Americas

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said that 2019 was the sixth year of IOM efforts to systematically record deaths on migration routes worldwide through its Missing Migrants Project. Since the beginning of 2014, the project had recorded the deaths of 32,046 individuals, including over 1,089 in 2019.

The month of June had been marked by several tragedies on the border between the United-States and Mexico, representing 23 deaths since 30 May, or more than one death per day. Just in the past few days, IOM had learned of a six-year-old girl from India dying of dehydration in Arizona after crossing into the United States from Mexico. It had also learned of a 12-year-old girl from El Salvador who had been shot to death near Coatzacoalcos, in the southern Mexico state of Veracruz, and of a drowning over the previous weekend near Piedras Negras on the Texas-Mexico border.

There had also been an alarming number of deaths due to irrigation canal flooding. On Monday, 10 June, authorities had found the bodies of three men in a storm-water drain near Ascarate Park, in El Paso. That same day, the body of a fourth man had been found in a canal near Upper Valley Road. The remains of a woman had been found on Saturday, 8 June, in a canal along Passmore Road, also in El Paso. On Wednesday, 13 June, the bodies of an adult man and a little girl had been recovered from a canal in the Lower Valley. Water levels in the Río Bravo and its canals had been rising recently with the release of water from dams upstream, which happened annually for the summer irrigation season.

Not counting other unverified reports—42 potential fatalities that the IOM Missing Migrants Project considered still under investigation just in Mexico, and several dozen more regarding refugees and migrants crossing the Darién Gap in Panamá — to date at least 380 people had lost their lives in the Americas in 2019, compared with 241 recorded through mid-June in 2018. The mark of 300 deaths, surpassed on 12 June, was the earliest so many fatalities had been recorded on Western Hemisphere migration corridors during the past four years. In 2018, 300 deaths had not been recorded until past mid-July, while in 2017 the mark had been hit in late June and, in 2016, on 15 July. The level of fatalities was higher than ever before and was likely to rise even further given the heat of the summer months ahead.

Responding to questions from journalists, Mr. Millman said that Coatzacoalcos was one of the hotspots that IOM had been watching for some time, owing to the frequency of accidents and deaths there. All that was known about the recent incident reported was that gunfire had been directed at a vehicle carrying three migrants, wounding two of them and killing the third – a 12-year-old girl. Irregular migration was generally dangerous and putting people in the hands of criminals to transport them raised the risks involved. Governments had an obligation to guard their borders and it was in governments’ interest to use border security as a way to monitor migration. However, it was also true that the harder it was for a migrant to enter a given country, the more likely they were to seek out help from underground criminal groups.

Responding to further questions, Mr. Millman said that there had been short periods in 2019 during which deaths recorded in the corridors of the Americas had exceeded those anywhere else; however, the figures fluctuated enormously. It was important to point out the biggest spike in numbers in 2019: 143 people missing in the Caribbean as compared to just 18 over the same period in 2018. Most had not been headed to the United States, at least not directly. The extraordinary rainfall in the Rio Bravo region had also been a problem in 2018, leading to warnings by authorities for those crossing canals. However, when persons were in the hands of smugglers, little heed was paid to such warnings and that had no relation to migration policy either in the United States or Mexico. In any event, it was not the place of IOM to comment on the law enforcement practices of member States. The tension between security and humanitarian impulses had always existed and it cut across all types of migration everywhere.

UNCTAD publication on economic development in Africa

Catherine Huissoud, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said that UNCTAD would shortly publish its report entitled Economic Development in Africa Report 2019 – Made in Africa: Rules of Origin for Enhanced Intra-African Trade. Rules of origin were an integral part of the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area, signed in March 2018, and constituted a veritable passport for the goods circulating in Africa. The aim was to expand trade among African countries by removing tariffs on certain goods and thus make them more affordable within Africa. A press conference would be held on Wednesday, 26 June, at 2.30 p.m.

UNCTAD quadrennial conference

Catherine Huissoud, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said that in the afternoon of Monday, 24 June, the host country of the next UNCTAD quadrennial conference would be announced. During its fifteenth session, the quadrennial conference would set the organization’s mandate and work priorities based on current economic realities, including the situation of developing countries.

WHO publication on epilepsy

Tarik Jašarevic, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said that WHO would shortly release its first global report on epilepsy. The report covered in detail the burden of epilepsy, the massive treatment gap in low-income countries, programmes that had shown success in addressing the treatment gap, the stigma and discrimination still faced by people with epilepsy in many parts of the world, what could be done to prevent epilepsy, and research issues. The report had been produced in collaboration with leading international NGOs, the International Bureau for Epilepsy and the International League Against Epilepsy. Epilepsy was one of the most common neurological diseases, affecting nearly 50 million people of all ages around the world. A press briefing would be held on Thursday, 20 June, at 2 p.m. The full report in English and executive summaries in the WHO official languages would be available (under embargo) from the afternoon of Tuesday, 25 June.

WHO campaign on containing antimicrobial resistance

Tarik Jašarevic, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said that on 18 June, at 2 p.m., a virtual press conference would be held to launch of the AWaRe campaign. To accelerate action against antimicrobial resistance, WHO would call on all countries to adopt AWaRe, a WHO tool to help contain antimicrobial resistance, improve antibiotic treatment and preserve the most precious antibiotics. A press release would be issued just prior to the press briefing.

Other announcements

Ms. Vellucci said that, on 18 June, at 11 a.m., NY time, the Secretary-General of the United Nations would launch the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech at an informal briefing for Member States. The first part of the briefing covering the Secretary-General’s and Under-Secretary-General Adama Dieng’s remarks would be webcast live. A press release and a synopsis of the strategy and the plan had been made available under strict embargo.

Christophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that he would be leaving Geneva shortly to take up new duties in Kinshasa. His colleague, Marixie Mercado, would be on mission with UNICEF for one month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as from 19 June 2019. Toby Fricker, who was based in New York, would act as the UNICEF communications contact person for the coming weeks.

Alessandra Vellucci, for the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, said that, for budgetary reasons, UNIS would be providing limited coverage of only the first week of the upcoming forty-first session of the Human Rights Council. The proceedings would be webcast, as usual.

Ms. Vellucci said that the humanitarian affairs segment of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) would take place in Geneva from 24 to 26 June. Details would follow closer to the date.

Ms. Vellucci said that, on 27 and 28 June, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People would hold an international conference on the question of Jerusalem, specifically on “preserving the cultural and religious character of Jerusalem”. Coverage of the conference would be provided and details of the programme would be circulated shortly.


Press conferences

Wednesday, 19 June at 9.00 a.m. in Press Room 1
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Human Rights Council, 41st regular session (24 June – 12 July 2019)
(A light breakfast will be served outside Press Room 1.)
Speaker:
· Ambassador Coly Seck (Senegal), President of the Human Rights Council (13th cycle)

Tuesday, 25 June at 11.30 a.m. in Room III
UN Geneva Director General
Key achievements, challenges and progress for UN Geneva during the last six years (end of mandate press conference)
Speaker:
· Michael Møller, Director General of UN Geneva