REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was attended by Spokespersons for the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Food Programme, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

New Documents

Ms. Heuzé said two new documents had been put in the press room. The first was the transcript of the press encounter held yesterday at Headquarters by the Secretary-General and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson in which they said that they expected real progress in the creation of a Human Rights Council and other reforms this week, including the strengthening of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The Director reminded journalists that ECOSOC would be meeting in Geneva in July.

The Director said the sixty-first session of the Economic Commission for Europe was being held at the Palais from 21 to 23 February. Available was the message of the Secretary-General to the session which was delivered this morning by Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Secretary-General to Attend Meeting of Alliance of Civilizations

Ms. Heuzé said the Secretary-General, in order to emphasize his concern over the violent reactions to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, had decided to attend in person the meeting of the High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, to be held in Doha, Qatar, this coming weekend. The Secretary-General hoped on that occasion to meet a number of leaders from Europe and from the Islamic world, and to discuss with them ways of calming the situation and allowing a constructive dialogue between people of different faiths and traditions based on mutual understanding and respect. The panellists would discuss, among other issues, which population sectors needed to be engaged to try to bridge differences and combat extremism, particularly in youth and immigrant populations.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said the Republic of Korea had this week presumed the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament. There would be a public plenary on Thursday, 23 February, at 10 a.m. during which the Conference would start its thematic debate on nuclear disarmament.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had yesterday started its three-week session at the Palais Wilson. The Committee would be considering the reports of Mexico, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Uzbekistan, Guyana and Botswana this session. This morning, The Committee would be concluding its review of the periodic report of Mexico, which started yesterday afternoon, and a press release on the meeting would be issued in English and in French.

The annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board would be launched next week in Vienna. The Director said that by the end of the week, copies of the embargoed report as well as related press releases would be available. The report was embargoed until 00.01 GMT Wednesday, 1 March.

Chikungunya and Avian Influenza and Cholera

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said WHO was sending a team from the WHO regional office for Africa and headquarters to La Reunion and other countries in the south west Indian Ocean where there was an extensive outbreak of chikungunya. This viral disease, which was rarely fatal, was transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. The mission would visit la Réunion, then Mauritius, Madagascar and finally Seychelles. The objectives of the mission were to develop the capacity for epidemic alert and response systems in the south west Indian Ocean region; to conduct an assessment of the chikungunya epidemic and evaluate its public health impact in La Reunion and the other affected islands in the south west Indian Ocean; and to discuss with national authorities a sub-regional coordinated strategy for surveillance and control of outbreak of chikungunya and other arboviruses in the south west Indian Ocean.

Dick Thompson of the World Health Organization, responding to a question, said WHO recommended that persons who were exposed to birds who were sick and diseased, and thus had been exposed to the Avian Influenza virus, should be given personal protection equipment, including eyewear, and that they be vaccinated against the normal, seasonal influenza.

Asked about how effective or important Tamiflu was, Mr. Thompson said that Tamiflu could be important during an influenza pandemic, if the pandemic was caused by a mutation of H5N1. From laboratory results, it was known that this virus was vulnerable to this drug.

A journalist asked if a WHO team would be going to Egypt to assess the extent of the outbreak of avian influenza in the country. In response, Mr. Thompson said whenever a Member State requested assistance, WHO had a mechanism for providing assistance. It may take longer than Member States wished, but WHO simply did not have the staff to respond to all these needs, especially given that outbreaks had become so extensive. However, WHO also had a system whereby it could ask for volunteers through the Global Alert and Response Network. WHO was now sending out an alert to this Network asking for special assistance for affected countries.

Ms. Chaib reminded journalists that there would be a press conference on counterfeit medicines and decisions made at the Rome Conference at 11:45 a.m. today.

Ms. Chaib said that since 11 February, WHO had confirmed that there was an outbreak of cholera in Yei in southern Sudan. More than 1,300 persons were inflected, and the outbreak has claimed 27 lives so far.

Human Rights

Praveen Randhawa of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said High Commissioner Louise Arbour had started her visit to the Russian Federation on Sunday, 19 February. Yesterday, the High Commissioner traveled to Nazran, in the Republic of Ingushetia, where she met with Ingush President Murat M. Zyazikov. The High Commissioner also visited the Gamurzievo camp for internally-displaced persons (IDPs) and held talks with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Today, Ms. Arbour would visit Grozny, in the Chechen Republic. Tomorrow, she would be in Beslan in the Republic of North Ossetia where she would visit School No. 1, the site of the attack in September 2004. More detailed information on her visit was available in the press release on her visit which was issued last week and which was available on the website of OHCHR.

The Special Rapporteur on the right to education would today be concluding his visit to Germany. He would present his preliminary findings to the media at noon today in a press conference in Berlin. In his findings, the Special Rapporteur advocated for a strengthened, rights-based approach to education that would ensure that education processes and structures were non-discriminatory.

Ms. Randhawa said two other press releases were issued yesterday. One on the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Asma Jahangir, who would visit Azerbaijan from 26 February to 5 March 2006 at the invitation of the Government. During the visit, the Special Rapporteur would travel to Baku and other locations in Azerbaijan. She would meet with Government officials, representatives of different religious communities and members of civil society in order to analyze the situation of freedom of religion or belief in the country.

Also, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Mr. Jean Ziegler, was deeply concerned by the current situation in the Horn of Africa. He requested that Member States immediately honoured their legal obligations and ensured the realization of the right to food of the suffering populations, in close collaboration with the authorities of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania. Mr. Ziegler also called on the Governments of these countries, in cooperation with the United Nations system, to address the problem of drought in a long-term perspective through adequate policies and programmes.

Horn of Africa

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said that as the media and the humanitarian community focused on the spreading drought in the Horn of Africa, WFP was deeply concerned that more attention was needed to highlight the persistent problems faced by the world’s refugees – most of whom were in Africa. WFP was aiming to feed 1.7 million refugees this year and was facing major challenges in raising sufficient resources to do so. Current refugee operations facing the most critical funding shortages included those in Zambia, Chad, Kenya and Uganda as well as assistance for Sahrawi refugees in Algeria.

Ms. Berthiaume said that in order to highlight this problem, the heads of WFP, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the UN Refugee Agency would meet on Saturday, 25 February in the Great Lakes region. They would visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo first, followed by Rwanda. A joint press release on this unprecedented visit would be issued on Friday, 24 February.

Other

Jennifer Pagonis of the UN Refugee Agency said that the number of refugees fleeing violence in the northern part of the Central African Republic continued to climb, with more than 4,000 new arrivals so far this month in neighbouring southern Chad. Tomorrow, UNHCR would move 300 of the newly arrived from the border to the Gondje refugee site. More would be transferred to camps in the coming days.

Ms. Pagonis said Portuguese and Italian air force cargo planes delivered some 20 tonnes of tents to western Algeria’s Tindouf region over the weekend as part of ongoing efforts to provide emergency shelter for more than 50,000 Sahrawi refugees left homeless in three camps following recent heavy rains and flooding. UNHCR planned to deliver more than 200 tonnes of relief supplies to the camps from their stockpiles elsewhere.

Ms. Pagonis said High Commissioner Antonio Guterres was in Brussels today at the invitation of the European Parliament’s Development Committee. There was also a press release on the eve of the scheduled start of Sri Lankan peace talks in Geneva in which Mr. Guterres said that the recent decline in displacement reflected the desire of the Sri Lankan people for an end to the conflict and continued progress toward stability in their island nation.

Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization said the Provisional Committee on Proposals Relating to a WIPO Development Agenda was meeting at WIPO this week. All of the documents on the meeting were on the WIPO website.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said an IOM operation to assist 4,000 vulnerable displaced Dinkas return home from Juba to Bor on board an IOM chartered ferry up the White Nile had been temporarily suspended because of an outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea in the regional capital Juba and in the neighbouring town of Yei. According to the World Health Organization in Sudan, the outbreak had so far claimed 27 lives and had infected more than 1,300 people. In consultation with UN and the government, IOM had decided to suspend the return operation that had already taken 800 vulnerable Dinkas to Bor in order to avoid a spread of the disease.

Ms. Pandya said IOM had launched a new website in Zimbabwe as part of its on-going information campaign to promote safe migration. In Geneva, IOM Director General Brunson McKinley was today welcoming the visit of the Permanent Representative of Kuwait in Geneva, H.E Ambassador Dharar Abdulrazak Razooqi at the organization's headquarters. During the meeting, Ambassador Razooqi would hand over a cheque for $ 200,000 in an annual voluntary support and recognition of IOM's global humanitarian work, projects and its activities.