REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service at Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also addressed by Spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Food Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General’s Proposals on Peacekeeping Operations and Disarmament

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in an informal meeting yesterday, told Member States about the need for restructuring to enhance United Nations efforts in the fundamental areas of peace operations and disarmament. He said the number of peacekeeping operations was at an all-time high, and there was a need to deal with the surge in demand. He proposed the creation of a new Department of Field Support that could support field operations more effectively, coherently and responsively, and establish a clear point of responsibility and accountability for field support. The Secretary-General also emphasized the need for sustained and determined leadership to deal with disarmament issues, and therefore proposed that the Department of Disarmament Affairs be constituted as an Office with a direct line to him to ensure access and more frequent interaction.

Secretary-General Introduces New Deputy Secretary-General to the Press

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that in a press encounter yesterday, the Secretary-General introduced the new Deputy Secretary-General, Asha-Rose Migiro, who had just signed a declaration pledging to exercise in all loyalty, discretion and conscience, the functions entrusted to her, with the interest of the United Nations only in view.
The Deputy Secretary-General said that she would strive to bring about a more integrated United Nations in all that she does.

Available was the transcript of the joint press conference by the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General. Ms. Migiro’s biography was also available in the Documentation Centre.

Messages from the Secretary-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Secretary-General, in a message to a UN seminar in Qatar yesterday on assistance to the Palestinian people, said that he was very alarmed by the precarious state of the Palestinian economy and the serious humanitarian emergency in the occupied Palestinian territory.

In his message to the UN Environment Programme’s Governing Council, which met in Nairobi yesterday, the Secretary-General said that it was the poor – in Africa, small island developing states and elsewhere – who would suffer the most from climate change, even though they were the least responsible for global warming. He also said that, despite the best intentions and some admirable efforts to date, degradation of the global environment continues unabated. He said it was also becoming increasingly clear, in North and South alike, that there was an inextricable, mutually dependent relationship between environmental sustainability and economic development. This meant that respect for the environment, and recognition of the crucial link between environmental and economic policies, could enjoy better prospects of being put at the centre of efforts to conquer poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Conference on Disarmament was this morning holding a public plenary during which speakers from Germany on behalf of the European Union, the United States, Morocco, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan were scheduled to take the floor. The next plenary will be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 13 February.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the World Health Organization wanted to inform journalists that there would be a virtual briefing today at 2 p.m. on Avian Influenza with Dr. David Heymann, WHO Acting Representative for Avian Influenza.

Brigitte Leoni of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction said Salvano Briceno, the Director of the ISDR Secretariat, would speak with journalists at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 7 February, on what could be done to reduce the impact of disasters linked to the last predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change that temperatures and sea levels would rise.

Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization said Francis Gurry, WIPO’s Deputy Director General, would speak on international patent applications in 2006 at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, 7 February.

Floods in Jakarta

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said according to the latest Government figures, hundreds of thousands had been affected by the floods in Jakarta, with some 150,000 displaced and more than 73,000 homes flooded. The National Coordinating Board for the Management of Disasters (BAKORNAS) was working to evacuate those stranded in flooded areas, and emergency relief supplies had been provided. OCHA and UNDP had set up a support structure to the BAKORNAS information centre for information management. The United Nations agencies were ready to provide assistance as requested, and OCHA had a United Nations Disaster and Assessment Coordination team on standby should the Government request its deployment. More details were available on the situation in the update document at the back of the room.

Human Rights

José Luis Díaz of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said High Commissioner Louise Arbour was in Paris today to participate in the ceremony of the opening for signature of the Convention on enforced disappearances. The statement that the High Commissioner was delivering at the ceremony would be sent to journalists shortly as well as a press release. The Convention was negotiated largely in Geneva, and it was significant because it closed a gap in international law by outlawing explicitly the practice of enforced disappearances. Enforced disappearances had always been illegal, but had always been banned under disparate provisions and legislation. This Convention consolidated this prohibition into one international treaty and called upon States parties who had ratified it to ensure that enforced disappearances constituted an offense under domestic law. It also significantly stated that the widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances constituted a crime against humanity. Work on the Convention started in the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances in Geneva. The Working Group found its origins in what was happening in Latin America and South America in the 1970s where the practice was wide spread, especially in countries like Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The Working Group was set up in 1980, largely to respond to that problem. The practice of enforced disappearances still existed today. More than 500 cases of forced disappearances were reported last year, and that was probably a lower number than the reality. Since the Working Group was established, it had received more than 50,000 reports of enforced disappearances, and only a portion of those cases had been cleared up.

Asked if it would be possible to meet with the members of the high-level mission to Darfur before they left for Sudan, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Information Service was trying to set up a press conference for Friday, 9 February. The exact time and the speakers at the press conference would be announced later.

Other

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said concerning the floods in Burundi, the situation was deteriorating as the number of affected persons was rising. WFP and non-governmental organizations on the ground were organizing a joint appeal for $ 131 million to help more than two million persons – 25 per cent of the population - who needed help up until next July. The torrential rains, which had been falling heavily since December, had destroyed between 50 per cent and 80 per cent of the harvest in a large part of the country. Out of the joint appeal for $ 131 million, WFP needed $ 12 million to feed the affected persons.

There were also serious floods going on in Bolivia after torrential rains hit the country. The department of Santa Cruz in Bolivia was on red alert, and many areas had been evacuated by specialized teams. According to the civil defence forces, the floods had forced more than 27,000 families out of their homes and had killed 26 persons. Harvests had also been destroyed. WFP was already distributing food to more than 8,000 families

Jennifer Pagonis of the UN Refugee Agency said High Commissioner Antonio Guterres was in Kuwait today on the second leg of his weeklong Middle East mission. He started his visit in Saudi Arabia. Later today, he was expected to travel to Jordan then to Syria on Thursday and Friday. UNHCR in early January issued a $ 60 million appeal to fund its work for uprooted Iraqis within their country and in neighbouring States, and for non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq.

Ms. Pagonis said off the coast of Yemen during the weekend, 15 people including a pregnant Somali woman died while disembarking in deep water from two smugglers boats which feared coming closer to shore. The two boats were carrying an estimated 260 persons across the Gulf of Aden from the Somali port of Bosaso. The new arrivals reported that thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians in Bosaso were waiting to cross the Gulf of Aden. In Colombia, the 2007 Campaign for the Rights of Displaced People in Colombia was launched on Friday with the support of more than 130 national and international organizations, including UNHCR and the Colombian Government. The campaign aimed to focus attention and lobby for the rights of Colombia’s three million people displaced by the armed conflict.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said the first group of internally displaced people who left Khartoum on an IOM convoy last Saturday as part of an ambitious operation to help return up to 150,000 displaced people to their former homes, was due to arrive at their final destinations in South Kordofan state today. In Iraq, a group of 17 Sri Lankan migrant workers who said they were expecting to be working in Gulf countries but were unknowingly taken to Erbil in northern Iraq, has just been helped to return home voluntarily by IOM. In Lebanon, IOM was launching a programme to provide psychosocial support and rehabilitation assistance to conflict-affected families and children who remained internally displaced or had returned to damaged infrastructures in the Southern region and Bekaa valley. And in Ecuador, alleging pressure from irregular armed groups, 38 persons, including adults and children, were recently forced to leave Bazán, in the Colombian Department of Valle del Cauca. The group left Bazán last week on a fisherman's boat and arrived in the Ecuadorian town of Tambillo in the San Lorenzo District of the Esmeraldas Province after spending some 30 hours at sea.

For use of information media; not an official record