REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from Spokespersons for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the UN Refugee Agency, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Trade Organization, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

New Statements and Documents

Ms. Heuzé said the Secretary-General was back in New York and had briefed the Security Council in closed consultations on Wednesday on the Addis Ababa meeting last week with the African Union on the situation in Sudan. The Secretary-General was awaiting today a letter from Sudan’s Government regarding the agreement reached last week on a hybrid UN-African Union force for strife-torn Darfur. Available were the Secretary-General’s remarks on this issue

Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, had also briefed the Security Council on his latest mission to Uganda and Sudan. Speaking about the security situation in Darfur, Mr. Egeland warned against an escalation toward a regional conflict, as large-scale killings and displacement of civilians were fuelled by cross-border raids, by groups who received arms and safe havens on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border. Mr. Egeland’s remarks were also available in the press room. Mr. Egeland would speak to journalists in Geneva on 29 November at 9:30 a.m.

The Secretary-General has sent a letter to the President of the Security Council informing him that he had received a request from Prime Minister of Lebanon Fouad Siniora to have the so-called Brammertz Commission, which is investigating the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, give technical assistance to the Lebanese authorities as they investigate the assassination of Pierre Gemayel. The Secretary-General was shocked to learn of the assassination of Mr. Gemayel and had strongly condemned this murder. The Security Council has also condemned the assassination. It came after the Security Council considered the report on the establishment of the special tribunal for Lebanon.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People would be commemorated on 29 November at 4 p.m. in Room XX of the Palais des Nations. The commemoration was being organized in accordance with General Assembly resolution 32/40B of 2 December 1977. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Under-Secretary-General and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, would open the commemoration ceremony, and read out the statement of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations. A note to correspondents was available with more details.

Ms. Heuzé recalled that the International Day for the Elimination of Violence
against Women would be commemorated on 25 November. The Secretary-General’s message on that occasion was available in the press room. International Aids Day will be marked on 1 December.

The final observations and recommendations of the Committee against Torture on the reports of Tajikistan, Mexico, Burundi, Russian Federation, Guyana, South Africa and Hungary, and the conclusions of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the reports of the Netherlands, El Salvador, Tajikistan, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania would be released later today. The Committees considered these reports during three- week sessions which were concluding today.

Report on the Effect of the Boycott of the Palestinian Authority on Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Matthias Burchard of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said UNRWA had been talking about the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for years, but some donor countries still had doubts about it. UNRWA and journalists knew about the Wall, the closures, the obstacles, the military incursions, the isolation of the Palestinian Authority after the January elections, the collapse of hopes, law and order and of the economy. UNRWA as a provider of services was interested in the impact of the situation, especially for the Palestinian refugees. It had prepared a report entitled “prolonged crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: recent socio-economic impacts on refugees and non-refugees”. The report focused on impact in three main areas: production, employment, and household poverty. The objective of the study was to measure the socio-economic consequences of the post-election boycott of the Palestinian Authority, to generate more and better information on the relative conditions of refugees, to improve understanding of their situation, and how UNRWA could better target its services and its contingency planning.

The main findings of the study were that the expansion of the public sector was responsible for nearly all the net growth in the occupied Palestinian territory in GDP terms in 2005 and the first half of 2006. While the public sector expanded, the private sector was drastically reduced. The loss of household income resulted in an average 12 per cent reduction in per capita consumption and a 64 per cent increase in the number of Palestinians living in deep poverty - this meant nearly one million persons out of nearly four million inhabitants in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The report also showed that the fiscal crisis of the Palestinian Authority had had disproportionately negative consequences for refugees, 32 per cent of whom where employed by the public sector. The results were worrying and the morality of these sanctions had to be questioned. The report also showed that organized assistance could provide relief and mitigate the impact of the sanctions. This encouraged UNRWA to continue launching appeals as it had done for Beit Hanoun this week and as it would do next week in the context of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP). UNRWA’s portion of the CAP for 2007 was $ 246 million, the highest ever.

On the situation in Gaza, Mr. Burchard said there were still ongoing Israeli military operations in seven areas in Gaza. Five Palestinians were killed yesterday and four the day before. This was sadly becoming a daily average. Eight UNRWA schools in Beit Hanoun catering for 6,000 children were closed because of the ongoing Israeli military operations. The delays and the unrightfully collected port charges by Israel in Ashdod port had caused a loss to UNRWA’s operational budget of nearly $ 28 million since 1996. This figure was equivalent to the food aid provided by UNRWA to all of Gaza in 2005.

Human Rights

Praveen Randhawa of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said High Commissioner Lousie Arbour had concluded her visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory on 23 November. She had spoken to journalists yesterday evening and her full statement as well as a press release were available at the back of the room.

Ms. Arbour also issued a report yesterday on escalating violence in northeastern Uganda. The report and a press release were available at the back of the room. The High Commissioner urged the Government of Uganda to review its forced disarmament strategy in Karamoja in northeastern Uganda and end violence and human rights violations against civilians in the area.

Ms. Praveen said in relation to the attack on 11 November in Sirba in West Darfur where it was reported that hundreds of armed men had attacked the civilian population, witness testimony indicated that the attackers largely targeted settlements for internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially male IDPs. The attack resulted in 11 civilian deaths and the burning of over 100 houses and livestock and property had been stolen. Those responsible for the attacks were described by the witnesses as both members of the Sudan Armed Forces and Janjaweed. Government officials in the area had since denied that milita were involved in the attack, and stated that the Government use of force was in response to an attack by Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels on a convoy of the Sudan Armed Forces on 11 November. According to the staff on the ground, no evidence had been found to support this claim and numerous witness accounts said that civilians and their homes and property were the targets of the attack. It appeared that the Sudan Armed Forces had launched a deliberate and unprovoked attack on civilians and their property, including areas inhabited by IDPs. Even if a convoy of the Sudan Armed Forces did come under attack and counter-attacked, the response was indiscriminate and disproportionate. Further, the extensive and wanton destruction and looting of civilian property which took place during the attack was prohibited under international humanitarian and human rights law.

Flooding in East Africa

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said
yesterday, a joint Government and Humanitarian Partner Flash Appeal for $ 7 million to meet the emergency non-food requirements and the medium-term rehabilitation needs of the flood-affected Somali Region of Ethiopia was launched yesterday to help 400,000 persons affected. The United Nations had immediately stepped forward by applying for more than $ 2.6 million to the relief effort through its Central Emergency Response Fund. The launch was to help provide shelter, non-food items, essential medicines, seed assistance, livestock interventions and water supplies. The situation in the flood-affected areas of Somali Region remained critical. Accessibility was improving but remained a challenge as light rains were forecast. More details were available in the briefing notes.

Simon Pluess of the World Food Programme said on Sunday, two helicopters would join the relief operation to help access the remote affected areas in Somali region in Ethiopia. Mustahil had been affected particularly badly and remained cut off since the beginning of the flooding, leaving 65,000 persons isolated and in need of assistance. There was urgent need for food, shelter and water purification kits. WFP had food aid on trucks but they all got stuck about 60 kilometres away from the stranded population in Mustahil.

In northern Kenya, Mr. Pluess said WFP had been flying helicopter assessment missions. Villages along the river were either completely submerged or marooned, and people were isolated with only a few days of food supplies and without access to markets. WFP would begin airlifts and air drops of food as soon as aircrafts were in place. But even in the best case scenario, only 20 to 25 per cent of the food requirements could be air lifted. That was why it was really important to focus efforts to get the road transport and alternative transport going. Two helicopters were also arriving to transport the food to the affected people in Kenya. In Somalia, WFP was distributing relief food, bringing 6,000 tons of food to help 180,000 affected persons since 17 October. However, the distributions were proceeding very slowly because of the floods

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said as water levels continued to rise and rains continued to fall, desperate refugees, forced to abandon their homes in Ifo camp in northern Kenya by flood waters, were being relocated to higher ground. More than 3,360 refugees had been transferred to Hagadera camp, one of the three camps in Dadaab. UNHCR was still very worried about the isolation of the Dadaab camps because of impassable roads. Small planes had been airlifting food into Dadaab’s small airstrip. There were more details in the briefing notes.

Michael Bociurkiw of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF was active in all three countries. In Ethiopia, access was the big problem for everyone. Aid workers were going by boat and by foot to reach the flood-affected areas. The big priority for UNICEF was water and sanitation. In Somalia, in Baidoa, seven children had died after drinking unsafe water in the past two days. UNICEF would help to provide clean water through chlorination and hygiene promotion.

Other

Anoush der Boghossian of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said next week, WTO would mostly be focusing on services issues. The Financial Services Committee would meet on 27 November. The Services Council would meet on 30 November, and the Specific Commitments Committee would meet on 1 December. The transitional review of China would be discussed within all these meetings. The accession working party for the Laos member negotiations was meeting on 30 November. The agenda of Director-General Pascal Lamy was also available.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs briefed the journalists on a meeting to be held in Oslo on Monday, 27 November to discuss guidelines which regulate the use of military and civil defence assets in disaster relief. These “Oslo Guidelines”, which dated back to 1994, now needed a face lift. Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator, would be attending the meeting, along with the Norwegian State Secretary Raymond Johansen.

Hans von Rohland of the International Labour Office said available at the back of the room was a media advisory on how ILO would mark World AIDS Day in the world of work. A new study “HIV/AIDS and work: global estimates, impact on children and youth, and response 2006” would be launched on 30 November. A wide variety of events were also planned in the world of work.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said no new attacks had been reported this week in volatile south eastern Chad near the border with Sudan's Darfur region, but thousands of displaced people remained too frightened to return to their villages because armed groups were still moving in the region. The few displaced Chadians who had tried to return to salvage belongings had in some cases been shot and killed. UNHCR now estimated that over 90,000 people were displaced in Eastern Chad, including at least 15,000 since the beginning of November in the southeast of the country near the Darfur border. The recent wave of attacks was also affecting Sudanese refugees from Darfur, who were now feeling increasingly insecure after fleeing their own country in 2003-04.

Mr. Redmond said more than 22,000 people had crossed the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen this year in smugglers' boats. At least 355 died making the perilous voyage and more than 150 were missing. Over the past eight days, nearly 1,500 Somalis and Ethiopians arrived in 12 smugglers' boats. At least 18 people aboard those boats died and 17 were missing. Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said along with asylum seekers and migrants looking to find work in the Gulf States and beyond, this route was also being used by trafficking networks to take the victims of trafficking through.

On Colombia, Mr. Redmond said UNHCR welcomed this week's introduction in the Colombian Parliament of a draft law that would declare 2007 the Year for the Rights of Displaced People in Colombia. The initiative would send a strong message of national solidarity and commitment to the millions of Colombians forcibly displaced as a result of the internal armed conflict. And finally, UNHCR was very concerned about five Palestinians -- three men and two boys-- who were arrested on Tuesday by Iraqi security forces at Al Tanf border crossing between Iraq and Syria. The five were part of a group of more than 300 Palestinians from Baghdad who had been stranded at a tented site in no man's-land at Al Tanf since early May this year after fleeing the targeted violence and killings of Palestinians in the capital.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said the 92nd session of the IOM governing body would open on Tuesday, 28 November 2006 in Conference Room XVII at the Palais des Nations with the admission of two new Member States, Nepal and the Republic of Montenegro. This will bring the number of IOM Member States to 120. The theme of the International Dialogue on Migration, which has been a core feature of IOM Council meetings since 2001, is “Partnerships in Migration: Engaging Business and Civil Society”.

Ms. Pandya said in Sudan, a first group of internally displaced teachers had returned to South Sudan as part of a new Return of Qualified Sudanese programme designed to address the needs for qualified human resources in South Sudan’s educational sector. In Somalia, the first 110 Ethiopian migrants stranded in the Somali town of Bossasso and wanting to go home, had been helped back to Ethiopia by IOM. In Indonesia, six months after a powerful earthquake reduced much of two Indonesian provinces to rubble, IOM was still building thousands of temporary homes, providing support services to badly injured survivors and transporting hundreds of metric tons of supplies into the quake-affected areas.

Michael Bociurkiw of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF’s national polio immunization drive to protect 4.8 million Iraqi children was proceeding. UNICEF had launched it in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Health in the middle of November. So far, despite the unrest, threats of kidnappings, curfews, and street blocks, 4.4 million children had been immunized under five, out of the target of 4.8 million. Because of the unrest in some sectors of Baghdad and in other areas, the campaign had been extended for a few days to be able to reach children in those areas. UNICEF and the Government had deployed 5,400 mobile vaccinators that travelled house to house across the country to immunize children under five against polio. The idea was to help maintain Iraq’s polio free status.
Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from Spokespersons for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the UN Refugee Agency, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Trade Organization, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

New Statements and Documents

Ms. Heuzé said the Secretary-General was back in New York and had briefed the Security Council in closed consultations on Wednesday on the Addis Ababa meeting last week with the African Union on the situation in Sudan. The Secretary-General was awaiting today a letter from Sudan’s Government regarding the agreement reached last week on a hybrid UN-African Union force for strife-torn Darfur. Available were the Secretary-General’s remarks on this issue

Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, had also briefed the Security Council on his latest mission to Uganda and Sudan. Speaking about the security situation in Darfur, Mr. Egeland warned against an escalation toward a regional conflict, as large-scale killings and displacement of civilians were fuelled by cross-border raids, by groups who received arms and safe havens on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border. Mr. Egeland’s remarks were also available in the press room. Mr. Egeland would speak to journalists in Geneva on 29 November at 9:30 a.m.

The Secretary-General has sent a letter to the President of the Security Council informing him that he had received a request from Prime Minister of Lebanon Fouad Siniora to have the so-called Brammertz Commission, which is investigating the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, give technical assistance to the Lebanese authorities as they investigate the assassination of Pierre Gemayel. The Secretary-General was shocked to learn of the assassination of Mr. Gemayel and had strongly condemned this murder. The Security Council has also condemned the assassination. It came after the Security Council considered the report on the establishment of the special tribunal for Lebanon.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People would be commemorated on 29 November at 4 p.m. in Room XX of the Palais des Nations. The commemoration was being organized in accordance with General Assembly resolution 32/40B of 2 December 1977. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Under-Secretary-General and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, would open the commemoration ceremony, and read out the statement of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations. A note to correspondents was available with more details.

Ms. Heuzé recalled that the International Day for the Elimination of Violence
against Women was commemorated on 25 November, and International Aids Day was marked on 1 December. The Secretary-General’s messages on those days were available in the press room.

The final observations and recommendations of the Committee against Torture on the reports of Tajikistan, Mexico, Burundi, Russian Federation, Guyana, South Africa and Hungary, and the conclusions of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the reports of the Netherlands, El Salvador, Tajikistan, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania would be released later today. The Committees considered these reports during three- week sessions which were concluding today.

Report on the Effect of the Boycott of the Palestinian Authority on Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Matthias Burchard of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said UNRWA had been talking about the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for years, but some donor countries still had doubts about it. UNRWA and journalists knew about the Wall, the closures, the obstacles, the military incursions, the isolation of the Palestinian Authority after the January elections, the collapse of hopes, law and order and of the economy. UNRWA as a provider of services was interested in the impact of the situation, especially for the Palestinian refugees. It had prepared a report entitled “prolonged crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: recent socio-economic impacts on refugees and non-refugees”. The report focused on impact in three main areas: production, employment, and household poverty. The objective of the study was to measure the socio-economic consequences of the post-election boycott of the Palestinian Authority, to generate more and better information on the relative conditions of refugees, to improve understanding of their situation, and how UNRWA could better target its services and its contingency planning.

The main findings of the study were that the expansion of the public sector was responsible for nearly all the net growth in the occupied Palestinian territory in GDP terms in 2005 and the first half of 2006. While the public sector expanded, the private sector was drastically reduced. The loss of household income resulted in an average 12 per cent reduction in per capita consumption and a 64 per cent increase in the number of Palestinians living in deep poverty - this meant nearly one million persons out of nearly four million inhabitants in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The report also showed that the fiscal crisis of the Palestinian Authority had had disproportionately negative consequences for refugees, 32 per cent of whom where employed by the public sector. The results were worrying and the morality of these sanctions had to be questioned. The report also showed that organized assistance could provide relief and mitigate the impact of the sanctions. This encouraged UNRWA to continue launching appeals as it had done for Beit Hanoun this week and as it would do next week in the context of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP). UNRWA’s portion of the CAP for 2007 was $ 246 million, the highest ever.

On the situation in Gaza, Mr. Burchard said there were still ongoing Israeli military operations in seven areas in Gaza. Five Palestinians were killed yesterday and four the day before. This was sadly becoming a daily average. Eight UNRWA schools in Beit Hanoun catering for 6,000 children were closed because of the ongoing Israeli military operations. The delays and the unrightfully collected port charges by Israel in Ashdod port had caused a loss to UNRWA’s operational budget of nearly $ 28 million since 1996. This figure was equivalent to the food aid provided by UNRWA to all of Gaza in 2005.

Human Rights

Praveen Randhawa of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said High Commissioner Lousie Arbour had concluded her visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory on 23 November. She had spoken to journalists yesterday evening and her full statement as well as a press release were available at the back of the room.

Ms. Arbour also issued a report yesterday on escalating violence in northeastern Uganda. The report and a press release were available at the back of the room. The High Commissioner urged the Government of Uganda to review its forced disarmament strategy in Karamoja in northeastern Uganda and end violence and human rights violations against civilians in the area.

Ms. Praveen said in relation to the attack on 11 November in Sirba in West Darfur where it was reported that hundreds of armed men had attacked the civilian population, witness testimony indicated that the attackers largely targeted settlements for internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially male IDPs. The attack resulted in 11 civilian deaths and the burning of over 100 houses and livestock and property had been stolen. Those responsible for the attacks were described by the witnesses as both members of the Sudan Armed Forces and Janjaweed. Government officials in the area had since denied that milita were involved in the attack, and stated that the Government use of force was in response to an attack by Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels on a convoy of the Sudan Armed Forces on 11 November. According to the staff on the ground, no evidence had been found to support this claim and numerous witness accounts said that civilians and their homes and property were the targets of the attack. It appeared that the Sudan Armed Forces had launched a deliberate and unprovoked attack on civilians and their property, including areas inhabited by IDPs. Even if a convoy of the Sudan Armed Forces did come under attack and counter-attacked, the response was indiscriminate and disproportionate. Further, the extensive and wanton destruction and looting of civilian property which took place during the attack was prohibited under international humanitarian and human rights law.

Flooding in East Africa

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said
yesterday, a joint Government and Humanitarian Partner Flash Appeal for $ 7 million to meet the emergency non-food requirements and the medium-term rehabilitation needs of the flood-affected Somali Region of Ethiopia was launched yesterday to help 400,000 persons affected. The United Nations had immediately stepped forward by applying for more than $ 2.6 million to the relief effort through its Central Emergency Response Fund. The launch was to help provide shelter, non-food items, essential medicines, seed assistance, livestock interventions and water supplies. The situation in the flood-affected areas of Somali Region remained critical. Accessibility was improving but remained a challenge as light rains were forecast. More details were available in the briefing notes.

Simon Pluess of the World Food Programme said on Sunday, two helicopters would join the relief operation to help access the remote affected areas in Somali region in Ethiopia. Mustahil had been affected particularly badly and remained cut off since the beginning of the flooding, leaving 65,000 persons isolated and in need of assistance. There was urgent need for food, shelter and water purification kits. WFP had food aid on trucks but they all got stuck about 60 kilometres away from the stranded population in Mustahil.

In northern Kenya, Mr. Pluess said WFP had been flying helicopter assessment missions. Villages along the river were either completely submerged or marooned, and people were isolated with only a few days of food supplies and without access to markets. WFP would begin airlifts and air drops of food as soon as aircrafts were in place. But even in the best case scenario, only 20 to 25 per cent of the food requirements could be air lifted. That was why it was really important to focus efforts to get the road transport and alternative transport going. Two helicopters were also arriving to transport the food to the affected people in Kenya. In Somalia, WFP was distributing relief food, bringing 6,000 tons of food to help 180,000 affected persons since 17 October. However, the distributions were proceeding very slowly because of the floods

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said as water levels continued to rise and rains continued to fall, desperate refugees, forced to abandon their homes in Ifo camp in northern Kenya by flood waters, were being relocated to higher ground. More than 3,360 refugees had been transferred to Hagadera camp, one of the three camps in Dadaab. UNHCR was still very worried about the isolation of the Dadaab camps because of impassable roads. Small planes had been airlifting food into Dadaab’s small airstrip. There were more details in the briefing notes.

Michael Bociurkiw of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF was active in all three countries. In Ethiopia, access was the big problem for everyone. Aid workers were going by boat and by foot to reach the flood-affected areas. The big priority for UNICEF was water and sanitation. In Somalia, in Baidoa, seven children had died after drinking unsafe water in the past two days. UNICEF would help to provide clean water through chlorination and hygiene promotion.

Other

Anoush der Boghossian of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said next week, WTO would mostly be focusing on services issues. The Financial Services Committee would meet on 27 November. The Services Council would meet on 30 November, and the Specific Commitments Committee would meet on 1 December. The transitional review of China would be discussed within all these meetings. The accession working party for the Laos member negotiations was meeting on 30 November. The agenda of Director-General Pascal Lamy was also available.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs briefed the journalists on a meeting to be held in Oslo on Monday, 27 November to discuss guidelines which regulate the use of military and civil defence assets in disaster relief. These “Oslo Guidelines”, which dated back to 1994, now needed a face lift. Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator, would be attending the meeting, along with the Norwegian State Secretary Raymond Johansen.

Hans von Rohland of the International Labour Office said available at the back of the room was a media advisory on how ILO would mark World AIDS Day in the world of work. A new study “HIV/AIDS and work: global estimates, impact on children and youth, and response 2006” would be launched on 30 November. A wide variety of events were also planned in the world of work.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said no new attacks had been reported this week in volatile south eastern Chad near the border with Sudan's Darfur region, but thousands of displaced people remained too frightened to return to their villages because armed groups were still moving in the region. The few displaced Chadians who had tried to return to salvage belongings had in some cases been shot and killed. UNHCR now estimated that over 90,000 people were displaced in Eastern Chad, including at least 15,000 since the beginning of November in the southeast of the country near the Darfur border. The recent wave of attacks was also affecting Sudanese refugees from Darfur, who were now feeling increasingly insecure after fleeing their own country in 2003-04.

Mr. Redmond said more than 22,000 people had crossed the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen this year in smugglers' boats. At least 355 died making the perilous voyage and more than 150 were missing. Over the past eight days, nearly 1,500 Somalis and Ethiopians arrived in 12 smugglers' boats. At least 18 people aboard those boats died and 17 were missing. Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said along with asylum seekers and migrants looking to find work in the Gulf States and beyond, this route was also being used by trafficking networks to take the victims of trafficking through.

On Colombia, Mr. Redmond said UNHCR welcomed this week's introduction in the Colombian Parliament of a draft law that would declare 2007 the Year for the Rights of Displaced People in Colombia. The initiative would send a strong message of national solidarity and commitment to the millions of Colombians forcibly displaced as a result of the internal armed conflict. And finally, UNHCR was very concerned about five Palestinians -- three men and two boys-- who were arrested on Tuesday by Iraqi security forces at Al Tanf border crossing between Iraq and Syria. The five were part of a group of more than 300 Palestinians from Baghdad who had been stranded at a tented site in no man's-land at Al Tanf since early May this year after fleeing the targeted violence and killings of Palestinians in the capital.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said the 92nd session of the IOM governing body would open on Tuesday, 28 November 2006 in Conference Room XVII at the Palais des Nations with the admission of two new Member States, Nepal and the Republic of Montenegro. This will bring the number of IOM Member States to 120. The theme of the International Dialogue on Migration, which has been a core feature of IOM Council meetings since 2001, is “Partnerships in Migration: Engaging Business and Civil Society”.

Ms. Pandya said in Sudan, a first group of internally displaced teachers had returned to South Sudan as part of a new Return of Qualified Sudanese programme designed to address the needs for qualified human resources in South Sudan’s educational sector. In Somalia, the first 110 Ethiopian migrants stranded in the Somali town of Bossasso and wanting to go home, had been helped back to Ethiopia by IOM. In Indonesia, six months after a powerful earthquake reduced much of two Indonesian provinces to rubble, IOM was still building thousands of temporary homes, providing support services to badly injured survivors and transporting hundreds of metric tons of supplies into the quake-affected areas.

Michael Bociurkiw of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF’s national polio immunization drive to protect 4.8 million Iraqi children was proceeding. UNICEF had launched it in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Health in the middle of November. So far, despite the unrest, threats of kidnappings, curfews, and street blocks, 4.4 million children had been immunized under five, out of the target of 4.8 million. Because of the unrest in some sectors of Baghdad and in other areas, the campaign had been extended for a few days to be able to reach children in those areas. UNICEF and the Government had deployed 5,400 mobile vaccinators that travelled house to house across the country to immunize children under five against polio. The idea was to help maintain Iraq’s polio free status.