REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Officer-in-charge of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization.

Secretary-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that Mr. Ban Ki-moon had noted with extreme concern the 2 August attack in Akobo, Jongeli State, Southern Sudan, and condemned the reported killing of 161 people. He also called upon the Government of Southern Sudan to bring to justice those responsible for these events. The full statement is available in the press room.

Conference on Disarmament

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Conference on Disarmament was holding today its first plenary of the third part of its 2009 session. This morning the President of the Conference, Caroline Millar of Australia, presented members with an amalgamated and updated draft decision on the implementation of the Conference’s programme of work, the result of extensive and wide-ranging consultations with delegations during the interval between the Conference’s second and third part of its 2009 session.

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had started its work yesterday by opening its seventy-fifth session, which is taking place at the Palais Wilson until 28 August. Yesterday afternoon the Committee had started its consideration of the report of Peru, which was scheduled to end this morning. This afternoon the Committee would start its consideration of the report of the United Arab Emirates.

Global Model UN

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that Kiyotaka Akasaka, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information would hold a press conference this Wednesday 5 August at 10:15 a.m. on the first ever Global Model UN simulation organized by the UN. Also present would be the Global Model United Nations Secretary General, Hannah Moosa, and Global Model United Nations General Assembly President, Petri Cozma.

H1N1 Update

Aphaluck Bhatiasevi of the World Health Organization (WHO) answering to various questions by journalists said that WHO had appointed Dr. Mohammed Hassen as WHO Chief for Pandemic, Influenza and H1N1 under the Health, Security and Environment Cluster and that he had taken office this week.

The only global numbers currently available were of laboratory-confirmed-cases and there was no estimates, up to this point, of how many people were really affected. Concerning the modelling of the pandemic, Ms. Bhatiasevi said that there were different groups working on different numbers and projections. WHO was not doing any modelling work itself but was coordinating the network of modellers. The network was comprised of independent modellers and institutions. WHO was looking at the work done by the different and independent modellers to come out with a global projection. That work was currently ongoing.

Violence in Nigeria

Esther Lam of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that OHCHR was deeply concerned by reports of violence and of the plight of civilians in the affected states in northern Nigeria, following the reported attacks by the 'Boko Haram' sect. In particular, the High Commissioner was concerned over reports of the killing of civilians during the fighting, wide-scale arrests and detentions, displacements and people being forced to flee their homes to take shelter in barracks for safety.

The High Commissioner recognized that the Government faced a major crisis, with fighting taking place right in the heart of the state capitals, said Ms. Lam. She hoped, however, that the Government would make every effort to achieve security with full adherence to legality and respect for human rights. She stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unlawful killings, arbitrary arrest and detention while calling upon the Government of Nigeria to fully investigate all incidents and hold those responsible to account. The High Commissioner also extended her deepest sympathy to the families of the victims and to the wounded.

Forest Products Annual Market Review

Jean Rodriguez of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said that UNECE was launching today the UNECE/FAO Forest Products Annual Market Review 2008-2009. The UNECE Timber Committee and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) European Forestry Commission had been releasing this review since the 1950s.

Ed Pepke, Forest Products Market Specialist, UNECE/FAO Timber Section, said that they had been doing this annual market review for almost 40 years and that this year they had seen one of the biggest drops ever, in consumption of forest products, while a few years ago record levels of consumption had been registered. Much of this had to do with the housing crises in the United States and in Europe. Housing constructions, which was the main driver of forest products markets, had fallen from 2.2 million houses in 2006 to under half-a-million this year.

The total consumption of forest products in the UNECE region had fallen by 8.5 per cent in 2008, but with marked differences between the three subregions: a 12.7 per cent drop in North America, a 5.9 per cent drop in Europe and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) consumption had increased by 3.2 per cent, said Mr. Pepke.

Tapani Pahkasalo, UNECE/FAO Timber Section, said that the wood energy market was surviving the economic crisis better than other sectors as demand for wood energies was driven mainly by government policies across the UNECE region. The demand for wood fuel pellets had increased by 20 per cent in 2008. Its current consumption exceeded 10 million tons and had been only of 2 million tons in 2000. In the UNECE region wood pellets was the most used energy for space and water heating. Also, in the biofuel sector there was now a focus on non-food crops as energy sources, such as wood biomass. But the crisis in the wood-processing sector was causing trouble for the wood energy sector, as the main raw material had been the by-product of wood processing.

Turning to climate change, Mr. Pahkasalo said that there were high expectations from the forest sector side to include more forest carbon in the post-Kyoto agreement at this years’ United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Using wood as an energy source would help countries to meet their carbon emission reduction targets, since the CO2 released when burning wood came from trees’ uptake of carbon during their life and emissions from burning would be captured back in now growing trees.

Mr. Pepke said that China was also covered in the publication because it was the greatest importer of round wood, most of which was coming from the UNECE region. China was also a major exporter of wood products, such as wood furniture, most of which was coming back into the UNECE region. While China’s forest products output had continued rising last year, it had done so at lower percentage, which showed that they had also been hit by the global economic crisis.

Mr. Pepke also noted that deforestation was not occurring in the UNECE region, except to a small standpoint in the CIS part. Deforestation was really occurring in Asia, South America and Oceania. In the UNECE region only a part of the annual growth was being removed every year and the forest were thus accumulating more and more wood every year.

9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific

Edward Mishaud of UNAIDS, said that UNAIDS would be participating in the ninth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, which was running from 9 to 13 August 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. There would be several events in which UNAIDS would participate. Several sessions throughout the week would focus on modes of HIV transmission specific to the region.

UN Economic Commissions

Jean Rodriguez of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said that Jan Kubis, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe had assumed the role of coordinator of the five United Nations Regional Commissions on 1 August, for a period of one year. This informal function, which rotated annually amongst the five Executive Secretaries, had been established in the mid-1980s with a view to reinforcing the regional dimension of all key issues dealt with by the United Nations.

Over the years this coordination function had allowed the regional commissions to strengthen their cooperation, work on issues of common interest and launch joint initiatives, such as a working group on statistics measuring violence against women and the Global Energy Efficiency 21 project, which was led by UNECE, said Mr. Rodriguez.