REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the press briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Food Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said that this morning the Conference on Disarmament was hearing several statements, including by the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Mourad Medelci and representatives of Morocco, Ukraine and Poland. The Algerian Foreign Minister presented a gift to the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, which is currently on display in the hall in front of the Council Chamber.

Ms. Heuzé also noted that the State Council of Geneva was currently holding an event called “Energy Pact Conference” from 16 to 17 March 2009 at the International Conference Centre Geneva with the participation of ministers from Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Oman and several Chief Executive Officers from energy companies. Former German Chancellor Schroeder was chairing the event. The conference was addressed by the Director-General.

Human Rights Council Tenth Session

Rolando Gomez of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the Council had listened to a presentation by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar this morning and was holding an interactive discussion with him. This was planned to be followed by a presentation by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights on a report on the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as mandated during the Human Rights Council eighth special session. This would be followed by a joint presentation by eight thematic rapporteurs also on the same subject. This afternoon, the Council would be holding a general debate on country situations which required the Council’s attention.

United Nations Humanitarian Air Service

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme said that the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service flied humanitarian workers from the UN and non-governmental organizations, as well as journalists and others to some of the hardest-to-reach emergency operations in the world. It was run by WFP on behalf of the entire humanitarian community at the request of the UN.

UNHAS was currently facing serious under-funding in several key emergencies, said Ms. Casella. Due to this lack of funds, UNHAS would be forced to close its West Africa coastal air service as of 20 March. This would affect aid workers and the beneficiaries who needed them in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast. This followed the temporary suspension of UNHAS service in Niger on 28 February 2009, also due to lack of funds. There was a serious chronic under-funding problem.

UNHAS Chad was significantly under-funded; it had now a shortfall of 92 percent on a budget of US$ 11.4 million. This was particularly worrying because in Chad UNHAS was expected to carry about 43,000 humanitarian workers, over the course of 2009, said Ms. Casella. For the Central African Republic, the shortfall was of 83 percent and there was no confirmed funding for that country beyond the end of this month. In addition, Ethiopia had only sufficient funding until the end of April 2009. This was a particularly worrying situation and it meant that aid agencies would not be able to get to the people who needed help. It also meant that the UN would not be in a position to do urgent medical and security evacuations in a timely manner in some of these areas.

Giving some examples, Ms. Casella said that in Niger air services were required due to security reasons. The UN Department of Safety and Security had banned all travel by road after several mine incidents and ambushes in the north and the east of the county. Even when roads were passable, it could take up to four days to drive to some of the most remote locations in Niger. Those same destinations could be reached within two hours by air. 50 aid agencies had been using the Niger Air Service to get to five destinations.

Ms. Casella noted that UNHAS had done a study on the cost-effectiveness of using air travel and had found that it was actually more cost-effective to fly aid personnel around Niger than it had been to drive. Aid agencies could save up to US$ 1,000 per staff member by flying rather than driving.

In West Africa, WFP had now received letters and emails from 30 non-governmental organizations working in the West African coastal area, pleading not to close the service and saying that in essence they would be shutdown or unable to perform their programmes if this service was closed. Unfortunately it really looked like they would need to close it as of this Friday, noted Ms. Casella.

One problem of the under-funding of UNHAS was the fact that there was no central pool for funds for its budget. Each UNHAS country operation was being separately funded. It was not only important to fund humanitarian missions but also the transportation to get aid workers to carry out their mission, stressed Ms. Casella.

Situation in the Sudan

Ms. Heuzé said that yesterday, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr. John Holmes had given a press conference. He said that the expulsion of the non-governmental organizations’ impact would not be felt overnight; the expulsion over time would impact such issues as provision of water, sanitation, outbreak of diseases and food.

He had also been “taken by surprise” by the statements of the President of Sudan, Omer Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, to the media about “Sudanizing” the relief operations and ensuring that, within a year, no foreign organizations would be working in the humanitarian assistance area. Such a decision would be inappropriate and should be reversed. Mr. Holmes said it was not clear whether the President just meant non-governmental organizations or United Nations agencies, as well. It would obviously have enormous ramifications for the welfare of the people in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan if the agencies were required to leave, said Ms. Heuzé.

The idea that the United Nations would simply hand over goods at the port to be distributed without its involvement and monitoring would be unacceptable, as it would be to foreign donors and aid organizations. If organizations were expelled, national staff would lose their jobs, also leading to severe problems, said Ms. Heuzé.

Reacting to charges that non-governmental organizations were providing information to the International Criminal Court, Mr. Holmes had said that whatever relationship those organizations had with the Court was entirely up to them. There was no need for OCHA to take a view on that. Non-governmental organizations working in Sudan were engaged in the distribution of humanitarian aid. He had no reason to believe that charges made against them, such as stealing, were justified. Those organizations’ finances were not monitored by the United Nations, but they were monitored by boards and auditors. The organizations in question, moreover, were “serious” organizations with a reputation of impartiality, said Ms. Heuzé.

Situation in Sri Lanka

Simon Shorno of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that in Sri Lanka fighting continued between government forces and the LTTE. The ICRC continued to fear for the life of person trapped in the conflict area in the Vanni. Tens of thousands of people continued to flee the conflict and to arrive near the northeastern coast. The situation of the displaced was extremely difficult as shelling affected the area and there was no water and sanitation available. The ICRC’s head of delegation in Colombo had described the situation as deteriorating by the day. People were forced to shelter in trenches. ICRC had continued to evacuate patients and to facilitate food and oil shipments.

Human Rights

Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay was beginning tomorrow a trip to Nepal and India. This would be her first official visit to Asia, since she had taken up the post of High Commissioner.

The High Commissioner also welcomed the Pakistan Government’s decision to reinstate the former Supreme Court Chief of Justice and other judges, who had been removed from their posts in 2007. She also welcomed the government’s pledges to free opposition activists and leaders who had been arbitrarily detained over the past week or so and to lift the ban on public demonstrations in the capital and provinces, said Mr. Colville.

Reinstating all of the 60 judges who had been sacked by the previous administration was an important step in the process of restoring the rule of law in Pakistan. The current government appeared to be showing willingness to respond to concerns voiced by its people regarding their human rights and the integrity of the judicial system, and the High Commissioner applauded this decision. She was also calling on the Government to release all activists that had been arrested during the recent protests, said Mr. Colville.

Since last year, Pakistan had made a number of significant commitments to promoting human rights and the rule of law, including signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture, as well as ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, noted Mr. Colville. It had also established a Ministry for Human Rights and had tabled a bill to establish a National Human Rights Commission.

However, OHCHR did not believe that sustainable peace and political stability within Pakistan, and in the wider region, would be achieved without real and sustainable advances on the human rights front. Signing up to these key international treaties was a very important step. Now, the challenge was to ensure that they were properly reflected in national law, and that the national laws were properly implemented, said Mr. Colville.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, three human rights defenders had been arrested on Sunday 15 March in Kinshasa, following a press conference that had been organized by a non-governmental organization platform known as “Réseau National des ONGs des Droits de l’homme de la République Démocratique du Congo” (RENADHOC). The three arrested included two staff of the non-governmental organization “La Voix des Sans Voix”, namely its well-known leader Floribert Chebeya and its Deputy Executive Director Dolly Inefo Mbunga. The third person arrested had been Donat Tshikaya of RENADHOC.

The three leading members of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s human rights non-governmental organization community had been arrested inside the headquarters of the NGO that was hosting the meeting. There had been no arrest warrant, they had been allegedly mistreated during the course of the arrest, and the people who had arrested them had also seized document and computers. The three human rights defenders had been apparently arrested and detained by the National Intelligence Service, which had no legal authority to carry out such an act, said Mr. Colville.

The arrested were currently being detained in Kin-Mazière detention facility. No one had been able to check on their condition. The UN human rights team in the DRC had so far been refused access to the detainees, despite having the authority to do so under the UN Security Council mandate and under a directive signed by President Kabila. OHCHR was calling for their immediate release, and for reparations for the illegal arrest and destruction of the non-governmental organization’s property, said Mr. Colville.

Refugees

Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency said that there had been more displacements in Colombia of indigenous people. In the latest incident, some 2,000 indigenous Embera people had been displaced this month from their collective territories in different areas along the Baudó River in the department of Chocó. This was occurring because of threats and fighting between two illegal armed groups. More than 1,000 Embera had been displaced this month in the Upper Baudó region of southern Choco, along the Pacific coast.

UNHCR had talked to nearly 900 of them last week in the town of Catru and another 114 had sought protection in another town. They had fled from 15 communities after some 200 members of an illegal armed group had entered their territory in the first week of March. They had threatened the Embera and had tried to force them to collaborate in attacks against a rival illegal force, said Mr. Redmond.

Also in the Lower Baudó, there were about nine communities that were being affected, where some 1,000 Embera were now empty due to fighting between the same two illegal armed groups. In Middle Baudó, there had also been displacement, noted Mr. Redmond. There had been a swift humanitarian response by the government and other agencies. UNHCR was concerned about the protection of these communities, said Mr. Redmond. There were credible reports of abuses that had to be investigated, including the reported murder of an indigenous woman and the rape of another two in the community.

The indigenous people in this region were under constant pressure from illegal armed groups, many of them were involved in drug trade. These people were facing increasing restrictions on their ability to hunt or fish in their traditional homelands. At least 27 different indigenous groups were considered to be at risk of extinction in Colombia, largely as a result of armed conflict and forced displacement. Their survival depended greatly on their ability to remain on their traditional lands. Unfortunately, many had been driven from those lands and had been dispersed throughout the country, sometimes in distant urban centres and UNHCR feared that many of them would never go home, said Mr. Redmond.

Turning to the situation in Chad, Mr. Redmond said that they had had five accidental fires just in the past months in two camps for Sudanese refugees leaving about 1,500 people homeless. These fires generally occurred as a result of poorly tended cooking fires, which were then fanned by heavy winds and were then spreading very quickly. UNHCR was trying to get people in these camps to stop using dry sticks and straw for their shelters and use more fire-retard materials like mud bricks and roofing material that did not catch fire easily. This had rather been an uphill battle and UNHCR needed additional funding.

Further, a donor mission to the Sahrawi refugee camps in western Algeria was taking place this week said Mr. Redmond. UNHCR, WFP and non-governmental organizations were taking a group of donors through those camps to assess the current nutritional status of the most vulnerable refugees and to evaluate the current programmes and practices.

Finance & Trade / UNCTAD

Catherine Sibut of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that, on Wednesday at 3 p.m., the UNCTAD would launch its report on the financial crisis, called “The Global Economic Crisis: Systemic Failure and Multilateral Remedies”. UNCTAD’s economists had been describing since years the fragility of the global financial system and the facts were now showing that they had been right. The report showed that the crisis had been the result of a financial system that was cut-off of the real economy. The report was also making proposals to address the current crisis and placed the UN at the centre of the reform of the international monetary and financial system. The report was also UNCTAD’s contribution to the work done by the General Assembly Commission of Experts on Financial Reforms.

Also today an expert meeting on the regulatory and institutional dimension of the services sectors in developing countries was starting, said Ms. Sibut. The objective of the meeting was to assist developing countries, in establishing regulatory and institutional frameworks and cooperative mechanisms to support strengthening of their domestic services capacity and its efficiency, competitiveness and export capacity.

Development

Adam Rogers of the United Nations Development Programme announced that the “3C Conference” would take place in Geneva at the World Meteorological Organization on 19 and 20 March 2009. The 3C stood for a coherent, coordinated and complementary approach to promoting security, development and peace in fragile situations. Representatives from the UN, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank and the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization were planned to come to the conference. The Government of Switzerland was hosting the event. It would bring together for the first time some 250 decision makers from 40 countries ranging from foreign affairs, security, development cooperation, finance, trade, justice and law enforcement to discuss ways to achieve security, development and peace objectives in fragile situations. The conference would draw on lessons from Afghanistan, Haiti, Liberia and Sudan.

World Meteorological Day

Gaelle Sevenier of the World Meteorological Organization said that on 23 March 2009, WMO would celebrate World Meteorological Day. A ceremony would take place at WMO Headquarters from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., which would be followed by a reception. This year’s theme was “Weather, Climate and the Air We Breathe”.

Environment

Christophe Bouvier of the United Nations Environment Programme Regional Office for Europe introduced UNEP’s new Director of Communications and Public Information, Mr. Satinder Bindra. He said that Mr. Bindra was based in Nairobi and was currently visiting Geneva to see how to coordinate the work of UNEP’s Nairobi, Geneva and New York offices and to work on a joint communication strategy and campaign, particularly in the road leading to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and as a follow-up to UNEP’s Governing Council and ministerial debate, which had taken place in Nairobi last month, on the subject of global crises and national chaos and how the green economy and green jobs could contribute to getting the world out of its current multiple crises and how the global government system could be improved to that effect.

Satinder Bindra, Director, UNEP Division of Communications and Public Information, said that UNEP was in the lead for doing the outreach on the road to Copenhagen, which was very critical for the UN, because they hoped that a new treaty would be inked there. Reducing emissions was very important for the world and was one of the priorities of the Secretary-General himself. Another major issue UNEP had also been working on was the Global Green New Deal. This initiative was very important in the current time; it was about hope and about creating jobs.

UNECE

Jean Rodriguez of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe said that Thursday morning there would be a meeting from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. at the Delegates’ restaurant with the UNECE’s Executive Secretary Mr. Kubic would answer questions about the impact of the economic crisis on the eastern European and central Asian countries.

Migration

Due to a heavy schedule, Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration could not present her press briefing notes to the press corps. You can access these notes under http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/lang/en.