REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Office at Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Labour Organization, the World Meteorological Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General’s Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that today the Secretary-General was heading back to New York from Istanbul, Turkey, wrapping up a trip that had taken him to six countries in 12 days. The Secretary-General would only be back in New York for a short time, as he would be off again before week's end travelling to Asia – first to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and then to Thailand for the Summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations and the United Nations.

From Asia, the Secretary-General would return to the United States to attend the donors’ conference on Haiti in Washington, D.C. Ahead of that Conference, to be held on 14 April, he had written to donor countries and institutions, as well as other key stakeholders, calling on them to make a special effort to support Haiti through renewed technical and financial engagement. In his letter, the Secretary-General had said that Haiti was at a critical juncture, and the conference was “of fundamental importance for consolidating the fragile stability of Haiti”. He had added that, during his recent visit to Haiti with former United States President Bill Clinton, he had found grounds for hope and optimism that Haiti could break the cycle of poverty. However, international aid alone would not provide economic security; what was required was sustainable social and economic development to enable Haiti to move beyond recurrent crises.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said she had also placed in the pressroom the Secretary-General’s recent statements on the series of bombings in Baghdad and on the earthquake in Italy.

Ceremony in Commemoration of Rwanda Genocide

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier recalled that today the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda would be commemorated at the Palais des Nations. The event would be held in Room XIX starting at 4 p.m. and all were invited. Available in the pressroom was a message of the Secretary-General on the occasion, as well as schedule of events.

Room XX
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced that, following next Tuesday’s regular briefing, on 14 April at 11.30 a.m., United Nations Office at Geneva Director-General Sergei Ordzhonikidze and Ambassador Javier Garrigues Florez, the Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations Office at Geneva, would hold a press conference to speak about Room XX, the new Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations room, which would thereafter be included in the guided tours of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Earthquake in Italy

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said OCHA Chief John Holmes associated himself with the statement made by the Secretary-General regarding the earthquake. John Holmes, like the Secretary-General, had informed the Italian Government that OCHA was ready to provide assistance. However, for the moment the Government was able to respond to the disaster and had not asked for help.

Brigitte Leoni of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) said that for UNISDR the earthquake was an occasion to recall that critical infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools and houses, now had to be rebuilt in conformity with seismic standards. Of course, in the present case Aquila was a medieval city, and it was practically impossible for many old structures to meet modern seismic standards. However, the buildings that had been destroyed had to be built back better.

There was not really an early warning system in place yet for earthquakes, Ms. Leoni commented. The Japanese, who were the most advanced in this field, had been able to determine a two-minute prior warning period. That was enough time to turn off power sources, however, and to provide prevention against fires, which were often the second greatest source of deaths in earthquake disasters.

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that WHO had also been in touch with the Italian health authorities to offer aid and sympathy; however, there had been no request for assistance for the moment.

Ms. Chaib noted that the Italian earthquake had come as they were celebrating World Health Day (7 April), which this year focused on the resilience and safety of health facilities and the health workers who treated those affected by emergencies. The destruction of the main hospital in Aquila, San Salvatore, reinforced the message that hospitals, in particular, had to be constructed so as to be able to withstand such disasters. San Salvatore, which had been built 15 years ago with a capacity to care for 5,000, had been 90 per cent destroyed. They had had to evacuate the personnel and patients from that hospital, who had been transferred to other facilities, notably in Rome.

Asked about methods being discussed in the media as early warning signals for earthquakes – such as measuring the escape of certain gases or monitoring the behaviour patterns of animals – Ms. Leoni said that of course they were looking into new methods, but so far there was no proven method for predicting earthquakes other than the one the Japanese had been able to develop.

Responding to a question as to whether WHO believed the San Salvatore Hospital was not up to seismic standards, Ms. Chaib said that it was too early to say at this point.

More Smuggling Deaths in Gulf of Aden

William Spindler of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said 8 people had drowned and another 22 were missing and presumed dead in the Gulf of Aden as a result of two different smuggling incidents over the weekend off the coast of Yemen. The first boat, reportedly carrying 40 Somalis, had capsized on Saturday evening as passengers started disembarking off the coast, some 80 kilometres east of Mayfa’a, where UNHCR operated a reception centre. Twenty people had made it to shore near Rass al Kalb, where a UNHCR partner, the Society for Human Solidarity, had provided them with water and food before transporting them to Mayfa’a for further assistance and registration. No bodies had been recovered and the status of those missing remained unknown. Survivors said the smuggler’s boat had departed from Marera, east of the Somali town of Bossasso.

A second tragedy occurred late Sunday afternoon off the coast of Rujeema, 120 kilometres east of Mayfa’a, Mr. Spindler said. Survivors said eight had died and two were missing and presumed dead after their boat carrying 23 passengers had hit rough seas. According to witnesses, some of the deaths had been due to suffocation after the smugglers had covered the passenger area with a tarpaulin to prevent water from getting in. Thirteen people had made it to shore, had been given first aid by the Human Solidarity Society and then transferred to the Mayfa’a reception centre. So far this year, over 17,000 people had arrived in Yemen after making the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa. Last year an estimated 50,000 had made the same trip. This year, 74 people had already died and 51 were missing at sea; last year a total of 949 had been reported dead or missing.

In response to a request for follow-up information on the recent incident off the Libyan coast, Mr. Chauzy recalled that there were actually two incidents. In the first, a boat reportedly carrying 257 persons had capsized. Twenty-two persons had managed to survive by clinging to the hull of the boat. About a hundred corpses had now been retrieved, but the majority had not been identified, as they had no documents. In the second incident, a boat containing some 360 people had been towed back to the Libyan coast. Those people were now in a Libyan centre. The difficulties in that case were that the people were not necessarily accessible in the centre, and the identification of those individuals was very problematic, given once again the lack of documents. They needed to get authorities from Cameroon to come and help in the process. IOM was helping to provide psychological assistance for the survivors.

New Wave of Displacement in Democratic Republic of the Congo

Turning to events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Spindler said that renewed fighting between two rival militia groups in the eastern part of the country had driven more than 30,000 Congolese from their homes. On 31 March, the so-called Popular Front for Justice in the Congo attacked Tcheyi, Bavi and Songolo villages in the Irumu area of Ituri district, some 50 to 80 kilometres, southeast of Bunia. In response, on 2 April, the self-styled Revolutionary Front for Peace in the Ituri had launched a counter attack. The Popular Front for Justice had splintered from the Revolutionary Front for Peace in Ituri in September 2008 and had carried out a number of attacks. The latter was a notorious group which has refused to participate in the peace process in the country and had been blamed for major human rights violations in the Ituri. It was highlighted that many of the newly displaced included persons who had been uprooted in the raids mounted by the same group in 2006 and who returned to their homes with UNHCR help in late 2006. This latest flare-up therefore threatened to reverse the considerable progress made in the repatriation and resettlement of thousands of Congolese affected by previous conflicts in the area.

In response to a question about who these groups were, Mr. Spindler agreed that the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was confusing. The two groups he had been talking about were part of the number of groups that had proliferated in the eastern part of the country; he had no details about their ethnic composition.

UNHCR Official Released in Pakistan

Regarding the release over the weekend of John Solecki, the UNHCR Chief in Quetta City, Mr. Spindler had nothing much new to add. He could only say they had held staff meetings in Geneva and around the world and they were “ecstatic” about the release, as well as very relieved that Mr. Solecki had been released unharmed. He seemed to be in good health. Mr. Solecki had now left Pakistan and was on his way home after his 60-day ordeal. Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier highlighted that there was a message of the Secretary-General on the subject.

Durban II

Doune Porter of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that the working group established to continue and finalize the process of negotiations on the draft outcome document of the Durban Review Conference had begun its second session yesterday, 6 April, and would continue meeting this week through Thursday. Yesterday’s meeting had been very well attended. The rolling text submitted by the Chairperson-Rapporteur on 17 March had been formally accepted by the working group as a basis for further negotiations. Delegations had called on one another repeatedly to exercise self-restraint with a view to finalizing the document by the end of the week. Yesterday’s discussions had focused mainly on technical aspects of the text, in particular the functioning of the follow-up mechanisms established after the 2001 World Conference against Racism and the role of an observatory on racist phenomena proposed by the High Commissioner in January. Yesterday’s meeting had been opened by the High Commissioner and her statement was available at the back of the room.

Ms. Porter noted that the current version of the rolling text had been translated into all the official languages of the United Nations and had been posted on the Durban Review Conference website (http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/). The final session of the Preparatory Committee would meet from 15 to 17 April and the Conference itself would be held from 20 to 24 April.

Humanitarian Crisis in Madagascar

Ms. Byrs said that the Flash Appeal for Madagascar was still being finalized, and she expected to announce it either late today or tomorrow. On top of this, yesterday, 6 April, the north of Madagascar had been hit by a category 1 tropical cyclone, “Jade”. OCHA did not have an assessment yet or any information on the impact on the ground; they were working on putting together an evaluation now. They were now in the cyclone season, which ran from December to April, and it was worth emphasizing that Madagascar had not yet recovered from the storms that had hit on 18 and 20 January, which had affected 60,000 persons.

At present meteorological conditions were so bad that helicopters could not make assessments of the affected areas. These disasters came on top of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country, owing, among others, to the drought in the south of the country and soaring food prices.

Other

Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Organization (ILO) said that ILO was celebrating its ninetieth birthday on 28 April, when the ILO had been established as an agency of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles. Hundreds of celebrations were being organized nationally and regionally, and here in Geneva ILO would launch a book on the history of the ILO and the quest for social justice. The launch date had not been set yet, but would probably be done in the context of the International Labour Conference in June.

Gaëlle Sévenier of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that on the occasion of World Health Day WMO had prepared a fact sheet on early warning systems related to weather, water and climate disasters. From 1980 to 2005, nearly 7,500 natural disasters worldwide had taken the lives of over 2 million people, 72.5 per cent of them caused by weather, climate or water-related hazards – such as floods, droughts, storms and health epidemics tied to climate factors. However, while the number of disasters and losses from such hazards had increased over the past 50 years, loss of life had decreased, particularly owing to increasingly accurate disaster warnings. WMO’s objective was to reduce by half by 2019 the fatality rate for such disasters. Available was a fact sheet and a press release.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced that the Russian pop star and IOM Goodwill Envoy in the Russian Federation, Valeriya, had pledged to give all the proceeds of her new single “Back to Love”, to be launched in London on 27 April, to IOM for its counter-trafficking work. The donation was particularly timely, as IOM’s rehabilitation centre in Moscow, which had provided over 300 trafficking victims with medical, psychological and social support, would run out of funds by the end of June this year.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier recalled that this Friday was an official United Nations holiday, and highlighted that there would therefore be no briefing. Next Monday was also a United Nations holiday, and the next briefing would be, as usual, on Tuesday (14 April).