REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE
Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was addressed by Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, and Carlos Lopes, Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. The briefing was also addressed by Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration.
Secretary-General to Give Inaugural Lecture in Geneva Lecture Series
Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, said he was pleased to inform journalists that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would give the inaugural lecture in the Geneva Lecture Series which was a joint initiative between the United Nations Office at Geneva and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research to address global challenges. The inaugural lecture was planned for Tuesday, 29 April and the theme was “are the development goals doomed to failure”. The aim of the Geneva Lecture Series was to raise awareness of the pressing global challenges to a wide audience in Geneva and beyond with a focus on how each individual could contribute to resolving such challenges. This in particular concerned challenges of the present day situation, as the world experienced a financial crisis and significant shortages of food which were especially affecting developing countries. These issues had been discussed yesterday at the level of people who were involved in them from all over the United Nations duty stations. The lecture was not only open to the diplomatic community, but also to the public at large. Anyone who was interested in or concerned with the topics under consideration could attend. Following the lecture, the public would be invited to participate in a debate. Although the event was open to the public, registration was compulsory, even for those who held access badges to the United Nations, so that the secretariat knew how many people would be present. The importance and significance of the lecture for the United Nations Office at Geneva was clearly present and evident, in building on the existing links between the United Nations Office at Geneva and Geneva International. Also, what was important was strengthening the relationship of the United Nations Office at Geneva with the public at large by opening the doors of the Palais des Nations to people who were concerned with today’s problems of the world. There was a need to forge increasingly closer ties with all stakeholders and to build awareness of the work that the United Nations was doing by bringing it closer to the people. The United Nations was created by the people and for the people, and this was exactly what they would like to emphasize during the course of this Geneva Lecture Series.
Carlos Lopes, Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, said he wanted to highlight some of the special features of the Geneva Lecture Series. The theme of the inaugural lecture, “are the development goals doomed to failure” had been chosen with a provocative manner to allow for a lively debate between the Secretary-General and the public. They were looking forward to meeting with members of the Geneva and Swiss public and to open the doors of the Palais des Nations to them. There were already many meetings with diplomats, but this series aimed to target, not the traditional public of diplomats, international organizations and members of civil society, but the ordinary people who were interested in the ongoing global debates. The public would be able to start their participation before the actual lecture. UNOG and UNITAR had chosen three partners, Television Suisse Romande, Radio Suisse Romande and the Tribune de Geneva, which would open specific sites to allow the public to pose their questions to the Secretary-General. It would be a very interesting and lively lecture, with the provocative and interesting opening by the Secretary-General, followed by questions raised by the public prior to the lecture, and then questions from the public present in the room. There was a United Nations’ site where people could register to participate and a few hundred persons had already registered which showed there was a lot of interest in this lecture. The moderator of the lecture would be a well known journalist.
Secretary-General’s Tour of Four West African Countries, New Statements
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would visit Ghana, Liberia, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire at the end of April. He would be in Geneva on 29 April to deliver the lecture which the Director-General had spoken about.
The Secretary-General’s statement welcoming the announcement by President Mwai Kibaki on the agreement on the composition of the Grand Coalition Government, bringing both parties to the Kenyan crisis together, was available in the press room. Copies of the Secretary-General’s address to the Special High-level Meeting of the Economic and Social Council with the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) were also available.
Asked if any press conference during the Secretary-General’s stop in Geneva was expected, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said she had no information about that at this point, but the Information Service would inform journalists if it was going to be possible.
Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families opened its eighth session yesterday morning at the Palais Wilson and adopted its agenda and programme of work. It was addressed by Ibrahim Salama, Chief of the Treaties and Council Branch of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Yesterday afternoon, the Committee heard from a non-governmental organization, the Scalabrini International Migration Network, on the report to be presented by Bolivia to the Committee later this week. This morning, the Committee held a brief public meeting at which it elected a new Bureau including Abdelhamid El Jamri as Committee Chairperson; Francisco Alba, Anamaría Dieguez and Azad Taghizadet as Vice-Chairpersons; and Francisco Alba as Rapporteur.
The Committee would start its review of the initial report of Syria at 3 p.m. this afternoon. The press releases concerning all the meetings of the Committee were available in the press room in English and French.
Human Rights
Robert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said he had no news today but just wanted to remind journalists that at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, 18 April, there would be a special briefing on the preparatory conference that was starting on Monday, 21 June for the follow-up to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, also known as the Durban conference. A lot of controversy had surrounded the Durban conference over the years. The briefing would be by Ibrahim Wani, Chief of the Research and Right to Development Division at OHCHR, and himself.
Mr. Colville said a technical meeting of 62 national human rights institutions was starting today at the Palais des Nations in Room XIX. Although it was a technical meeting, it could be interesting to journalists to speak to the representatives of these institutions, and he could provide anyone interested of the list of countries which they represented.
Increasing World Food Prices
Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF was extremely worried about the situation of increasing food prices. There had been disturbances in Haiti, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Cambodia and other countries because of the increasing food prices. This was of extreme concern to all humanitarian actors, including UNICEF. Every year, 3.5 million children died because of malnutrition. The increasing food prices could force families to spend more on less food, and the families could also remove their children from school so that they could work and raise some money. The humanitarian actors were trying to carry out measures to avoid children leaving school in order to work. A united and structured reflection on the problem was necessary. If free meals provided at schools were stopped because of lack of funds that would be a very big concern. In many families, the only semi-balanced meal that children ate was provided at school, and if this stopped, it would be a very big concern.
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier told journalists that the Secretary-General’s statement to the Special High-level Meeting of the Economic and Social Council with the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development dealt with the consequences of the increasing food prices in length. “The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions,” Secretary-General Ban said. “We need not only short-term emergency measures to meet urgent critical needs and avert starvation in many regions across the world, but also a significant increase in long-term productivity in food grain production.” He added that the international community would also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avert the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis. The United Nations also needed to examine ways to lead a process for the immediate and longer-term responses to this global problem.
Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme, responding to a question on whether humanitarian agencies should ask donors not to put conditions that food had to be bought from their own producers, said this procedure of “tied food” was taking place less and less. Of the money received last year by WFP, 80 per cent of the money was used to buy food locally, or near the country where it would be distributed. This was part of the WFP strategy to reduce the impact of the increasing prices of food and fuel. At the same time, WFP needed to be careful, because while it wanted to help the country where it bought the food, it did not want to result in a negative impact on prices. It was a very delicate balance.
UNHCR
Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency reminded journalists that High Commissioner Antonio Guterres had been invited to the Palais des Nations on Thursday, 17 April, with the Norwegian Refugee Council for a briefing at 2 p.m. about the Norwegian Refugee Council’s publication “internal displacement monitoring centres: global overview on internal displacement”. This publication was considered the main guide for internal displacement globally and it was prepared annually.
Mr. Redmond said in Pakistan, UNHCR had temporarily suspended its Afghan voluntary return operation via Peshawar in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province due to a roadblock in the tribal areas leading to Afghanistan. The dispute was fuelled by a dispute between local tribes, and the blockage of the highway had left hundreds of home-bound Afghans stranded. The operation would resume once the roadblock was cleared. Today was also the deadline for the closure of the Jalozai refugee village in North West Frontier Province. There was more information on that in the briefing note, as well as an update on the fire in Chad’s Goz Amer refugee camp, including UNHCR’s efforts to help the 2,130 refugees left homeless by the fire.
United Nations Children’s Fund
Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said available was a press release on “Countdown to 2015” about a meeting of leading global health experts, policy-makers and parliamentarians in Cape Town starting 16 April to address the urgent need for accelerated progress to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths if the Millennium Development Goals on these issues were to be met. This was the second time this meeting was being held. The first was in held in London in 2005. Available was a press release with more information and with the address of a website which contained even more information. The press release was embargoed until Wednesday, 16 April at 11 a.m. GMT.
In response to a question, Ms. Taveau said countries had different maternal, newborn and child death rates. Some time ago, she had distributed a document with all the figures on child development in countries around the world called “progress for children”. There were huge disparities in figures between various countries.
International Organization for Migration
Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said identifying particular issues surrounding the various kinds of return migration and finding common and effective means to deal with them would be the focus of an international gathering organized by IOM in Geneva next week.
With every country in the world a country of origin, transit or destination for migrants, ministers and representatives from governments, academia, civil society and international organizations attending the meeting on 'Return Migration - Challenges and Opportunities' on 21 and 22 April would tackle an aspect of the migration phenomenon that was attracting increasing interest from governments and policy makers.
Mr. Chauzy said a live video conference on 17 April would link representatives of the Vietnamese diaspora in the United Kingdom and migrants who had chosen to return to Viet Nam under IOM's Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme. In Tajikistan, as part of ongoing efforts to raise awareness in the general public on the issue of human trafficking, IOM and Tajikistan's Inter-Ministerial Commission on Combating Trafficking in Person would organize a series of events with the support of local artists on 15 and 16 April. In Pakistan, a Housing Reconstruction Centre established by IOM in the North West Frontier Province town of Abbottabad to train owners of houses destroyed or damaged in the 2005 earthquake in improved building techniques might close at the end of May due to lack of funds.