REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the UN Refugee Agency, the International Telecommunication Union and the International Organization for Migration.

New Statements by the Secretary-General

Ms. Heuzé said the Secretary-General has welcomed the Declaration on the Advancement of South-North Korean Relations, Peace and Prosperity, signed in Pyongyang by the leaders of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea as a major step forward to enhance inter-Korean cooperation as well as peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. The Secretary-General’s statement was available in the press room in English and in French.

The Secretary-General had also spoken to reporters after meeting with Ibrahim Gambari, his Special Advisor to Myanmar, who briefed the Secretary-General about his visit to Myanmar. Asked whether he was satisfied with the results of Mr. Gambari’s visit, the Secretary-General said, “We are doing what we must do. And I was relatively relieved that he was, first of all, able to meet with the leaders of the Myanmar Government as well as Madame Aung San Suu Kyi.” But he expressed his continuing concerns about the ongoing situation in Myanmar, including the human rights situation. Mr. Gambari would today be briefing the Security Council, following which he would speak to journalists.

Committee on the Rights of the Child

Ms. Heuzé said the Committee on the Rights of the Child would today be concluding its forty-sixth session. A roundup press release would be issued later in the day with the Committee’s concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Croatia, Lithuania, Sierra Leone, Luxembourg, Qatar, Bulgaria, France, Venezuela, Spain and Syria which were considered during the session. As soon as the concluding observations were available, they would be put in the press room. At noon today at the Palais Wilson, the fully revised third edition of the Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child would be handed over by the United Nations Children’s Fund, which had produced it, to the Committee at the closing meeting. A note to correspondents on the Handbook was available at the back of the room. The handbook was 500 pages long, but if journalists went to the Palais Wilson at noon, they could get the complete text of the Handbook on a CD-Rom.

The next session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child would be held from 14 January to 1 February and would consider reports from Georgia, Timor-Leste, Bhutan, Dominican Republic, Ireland, Kuwait and Chile.

Effects of Conflict on Schooling of Palestinian Refugee Children

Matthias Burchard of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that war, violence, occupation, closures and poverty had had a dire effect on the schooling of Palestinian refugee children. This had now been established by an internal survey undertaken by UNRWA that evaluated and compared regional exam results with those of UNRWA’s host governments and authorities. Today, on the UN Day of the Teacher, UNRWA was releasing these figures for the first time. The figures showed that in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, the performance of children in UNRWA schools compared very favourably with the Government-run schools, in spite of the Agency’s well-known limited resources. In Gaza, however, independent testing conducted by UNRWA had revealed a worrying rate of failure in Mathematics and Arabic amongst the student population. UNRWA, which had been aware of this decline, but now had scientifically underpinned the assumption, was pursuing immediate and remedial action to improve these declined educational standards in Gaza by hiring more than 1,500 new classroom assistants, limiting class sizes to 30, adding extra classes in Arabic and Mathematics, and building a new teacher training college.

Other

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said a press release would be issued this afternoon on Palliative Care International Day. The press release would speak about a manual that WHO would be issuing on the importance of palliative care, especially for patients suffering from terminal cancer. Millions of people, especially in the developing world, died in great pain with no access to palliative care.

Ms. Chaib said there was no new information with regard to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Cholera outbreak in Iraq. All the available information was on the WHO website.

Teresa Buerkle of the Food and Agriculture Organization said today, FAO would issue its Crop Prospects and Food Situation report. Starting noon today, the report would be available on the FAO website. A press release on the report was available at the back of the room. One of the highlights was that wheat prices had hit record-high levels in response to tightening world supplies, historically low levels of stocks and sustained demand. The combination of higher export prices and soaring freight rates was pushing up domestic prices of bread and other basic food in importing developing countries, hitting the group of low-income food-deficit countries particularly hard and causing social unrest in some areas.

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said in Myanmar, WFP was
very worried about the delay in the movement of food supplies from Sittwe
port to North Rakhin. Communications between Rangoon and Sittwe were also
difficult. The situation was worrying because WFP was distributing food to 200,000 people in North Rakhin but it was running out of stocks. Myanmar has a serious problem of chronic malnutrition according to official figures.

Brigitte Leoni of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) said the 2007 UN Sasakawa Award had selected two Laureates dedicated to communicating lessons of past disasters. Professor Yoshiaki Kawata from the Disaster Prevention Research Institute in Japan and Tony Gibbs, a highly respected Caribbean engineer in building safety, had been selected. A press release with more details was available. On the ISDR website, there were interviews with the two Laureates.

Ms. Leoni said the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction was this year being commemorated on Wednesday, 10 October. To mark the International Day, ISDR would be organizing a round table in Salle XXI of the Palais des Nations to
evaluate the 2006-2007 World Disaster Reduction Campaign, the theme of which was “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School.”

In conclusion, Ms. Leoni said that on 10 October, ISDR would also be launching an on-line game aimed at teaching children how to build safer villages and cities against disasters.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency reminded journalists that High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres would briefing journalists today at 1 p.m. in Salle III at the conclusion of UNHCR’s annual Executive Committee meeting.

Mr. Redmond said UNHCR’s field staff in Damascus had confirmed that the new visa restrictions for Iraqis wishing to enter Syria were being strictly observed. Since the visa restrictions were imposed on Monday, 1 October, the only Iraqis who had succeeded in crossing the border were those who had been issued visas for commercial, transport, scientific and education purposes. So far, visas were granted to people who were applying for commercial, scientific, educational and transport purposes. UNHCR was advocating for a “humanitarian via” for Iraqis fleeing persecution in Iraq. From discussions with Syrian government officials, UNHCR understood that Iraqi refugees currently living in Syria would not be forcibly returned to Iraq. The Syrian Government had made it clear that the visa restrictions had been imposed due to the massive pressure it faced hosting more than 1.4 million Iraqi refugees. UNHCR continued to appeal for increased bilateral support to Syria so it could continue to support the Iraqi refugees living in the country, and hopefully offer refuge for those Iraqis that needed to flee Iraq in the future.

Mr. Redmond said that over the past week, some 5,000 displaced people in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had taken advantage of a lull in fighting between government forces, renegade troops and rebels, to find refuge at five sites for the displaced in the Muguna area west of Goma. UNHCR had dispatched a seven-member UNHCR emergency team to North Kivu to reinforce its camp management and coordination efforts in the overstretched sites for internally displaced persons near Goma.

In Greece, Mr. Redmond said while the numbers of irregular arrivals by sea in Italy and Spain were decreasing, the number of migrants and asylum seekers arriving in Greece by boat from Turkey had increased dramatically this year. Among those arriving by boat were Iraqis, Afghans and Somalis. As a result, detention centres in Greece were experiencing serious problems of overcrowding.

Sanjay Acharya of the International Telecommunication Union said there would be a press conference at 4 p.m. today at ITU on the Global Cybersecurity Agenda. The press conference would be held following the first meeting of the High-Level Experts Group for the Global Cybersecurity Agenda, which aimed to develop global strategies to fight cybercrime and agree on concrete steps towards the reduction of cyber-threats and other misuses of information and communication technologies.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said how to create the means for global labour mobility to be managed to positive result in an increasingly globalized world would be a key issue to be addressed by an international gathering organized by IOM in Geneva next week. The meeting “Making Global Labour Mobility A Catalyst for Development” would be held from 8 to 9 October.

Ms. Pandya said in Panama, the recent deaths of indigenous children in north western Panama illustrated the urgent need to improve the health of indigenous peoples in Central America. In Austria, Government officials, parliamentarians, experts as well as non-governmental organization representatives from both developing and industrialized countries were today meeting in Vienna to discuss the potential of disaspora communities in contributing to coherent policies maximizing the development potential of migration. In France, IOM Director-General Brunson McKinley was today opening a new office in the southern French city of Marseille which would help develop and expand the Organization’s activities in France. And in Uruguay, with a significant proportion of its citizens living abroad and faced with an ageing population, policy and decision makers in Uruguay were this week participating in an IOM-sponsored discussion to analyze and exchange ideas on how international migration was impacting Uruguay.

Luisa Ballin of the Inter-Parliamentary Union said she had sent to journalists a press release earlier this week on the meeting of parliamentary leaders in Geneva from 8 to 10 October to consider issues of democracy and respect for human rights at the 117th Assembly of the Inter-parliamentary Union which would be held at the International Centre for Conferences in Geneva. The press release was available in the press room, and a new release would be issued on Monday, 8 October. Also available was a list of speakers and deputy speakers of parliaments participating in the Assembly.