REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons and representatives of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Telecommunication Union and the International Organization for Migration.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that yesterday the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had opened its four-week session, during which it would examine the reports of 11 countries, electing the members of its Bureau, who would hold their offices for a term of two years. Mr. Anwar Kemal of Pakistan was elected President by the Committee members. Yesterday afternoon, the Committee began its consideration of the report of Monaco, which it will conclude this morning. This afternoon, the Committee would start its review of the report of Slovakia, and would continue throughout the week to examine country reports of Argentina, Cambodia and Guatemala.

The Conference on Disarmament was holding a public plenary meeting this morning, and was scheduled to hear an address by Igor Petrishenko, the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus. It was the first public plenary under the Presidency of Belarus, Ms. Momal-Vanian added.

Also in Geneva at the Palais des Nations, Ms. Momal-Vanian also noted that the session of the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council was ongoing.

Catherine Sibut-Pinote of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) drew attention to a Group of Experts meeting on Thursday afternoon and Friday (18 and 19 February) in preparation for the International Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC IV) to be held in Turkey in 2011. She recalled that in 1971 the United Nations had identified a group of 25 countries deemed to be “least developed”. That group now included 49 countries. Why the number of such countries had doubled was one of the questions Experts would consider, along with many others, such as why certain least developed countries had developed more rapidly than others in terms of economic production and trade and what had been the impact of international assistance. The meeting would be opened by the Secretary-General of UNCTAD at 3 p.m. on Thursday, and was open to journalists.

Haiti

Paul Garwood of the World Health Organization (WHO) said a programme to prevent severe malnutrition in infants and children in Haiti had commenced. It was a joint United Nations programme involving WHO, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Children’s Fund, and was also supported by the United Nations Police. Under the programme, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, infants and children under five years old who were living in makeshift shelters across Port-au-Prince would receive high-energy food supplements. With the programme, United Nations agencies hoped to reach more than 16,000 women and 53,000 children within the next three weeks.

In terms of disease monitoring, Mr. Garwood said that, so far, the epidemiological surveillance system –based on 52 sentinel sites operating in the country – did not show an increase in infectious diseases being reported. Respiratory infections were the main cause of morbidity, followed by diarrhoea and malaria. There had been two isolated cases of typhoid confirmed through laboratory testing; 12 suspected cases of measles reported, but none confirmed; and one unconfirmed case of diphtheria had been reported.

Tomorrow, there would be a press briefing here with WHO’s representative to Haiti, Mr. Garwood announced. She had been in the country during the earthquake. The briefing would be held in Room III at 12.15 p.m.

Chris Lom of IOM said that this week IOM was launching a mental health and psychosocial assistance project, funded by Sweden, designed to reach 150,000 people. It had been designed on a model developed since the Tsunami in Aceh, which was essentially about training up local mental health workers and the community in responding to the mental health problems after major natural disasters. It was a six-month programme and WHO was running it in close cooperation with the faculty of psychology at Port-au-Prince University. They were hoping to train up about 550 local humanitarian workers, religious leaders and community leaders to sensitize their communities to the mental health problems that were likely to emerge after this sort of disaster.

Ms. Momal-Vanian just wanted to draw attention to some numbers published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) yesterday on the rise in food prices in Haiti. The numbers, which were available on the FAO website, indicated that the price of certain foodstuffs had increased since the quake. For example, the cost of wheat flour had risen by 70 per cent; rice by 20 to 30 per cent; and corn and black beans between 30 and 35 per cent. FAO highlighted that, as most of the food consumed in Haiti was imported, the country was in any case very vulnerable to external shocks and price fluctuations. She also drew attention to an Internet tool that FAO had put in place to be used as a guide for international organizations and non-governmental organizations working in the country – the Haiti Food Security Tool – which aggregated data from a variety of authoritative sources and presented that information in an interactive map form. Subjects covered included useable roads, crop calendars, land use, livelihood zones and damage information. It was a project based on the Global Information and Early Warning System Workstation funded by the European Commission.

Situation in Northern Yemen

Melissa Fleming of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said UNHCR had been encouraged by the first, and so far lasting, ceasefire between Yemeni troops and the Al Houti movement in northern Yemen. The conflict had been raging for six years, and this was the first such ceasefire that seemed to be holding. UNHCR was renewing its call for access to Sa’ada province, so that aid agencies could deliver much needed aid to the civilian population. In particular those displaced and trapped by the fighting needed urgent and massive support.

Ms. Fleming said that UNHCR was preparing for a potential shift in operations due to the ceasefire, as many people said they wanted to go back to their homes in the north of the country. UNHCR was especially concerned about the safety of those internally displaced persons who might decide to return on their own because the places where fighting had been taking place were littered with mines and unexploded ordnance. However, UNHCR’s biggest problem was that they continued to face a serious funding shortfall – and that was true for all United Nations aid organizations in Yemen – and so, despite the potential good news of the ceasefire, if the money did not start coming in they might be forced to scale down or suspend some of their operations for refugees and internally displaced persons in Yemen.

Situation of Somali Refugees in Ethiopia

Ms. Fleming said that last Friday, 12 February, UNHCR had started relocation of Somali refugees from a transit centre near the border to a new camp some 65 kilometres away. They were part of a group of 7,000 Somalis who had recently been recognized as refugees by the Ethiopian Government. The Somali Region of Ethiopia already hosted more than 60,000 Somali refugees in four camps. UNHCR welcomed that Ethiopia was being so generous and offering this additional land for this very much-needed additional camp. The situation in Mogadishu, in which some 13,600 people had been forced from their homes over the past two weeks alone, was a result of clashes between the Transitional Federal Government forces and armed opposition groups. Only 8,800 people had managed to escape from the capital, mainly to the IDP settlements in the Afgooye corridor, while others were stranded in other safer parts of Mogadishu. The number of casualties and of people injured in the crossfire was alarming. At least 50 people had been reportedly killed and over 100 had been injured since the conflict had intensified last week. UNHCR were trying to carry out distribution of emergency relief items and at the same time were reporting outflows across the border – not only to Ethiopia, but also to Kenya. So far this year, UNHCR had seen 6,450 people arriving in Kenya, of whom 2,400 had already arrived in February.
Environment and Climate Change Meetings

Michael Stanley-Jones of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that on Sunday, 21 February, more than 100 environment ministers, civil society representatives and environmental figures from around the world would gather in Bali for the largest global environmental gathering of the year. For the first time, the States parties to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions would convene their independent Conferences of the Parties simultaneously in a novel effort to strengthen synergies between those three global chemicals and waste treaties. The simultaneous Extraordinary Conference of the Parties to the three Conventions would be held from 21 to 24 February, on the eve of the opening of the eleventh special session of the UNEP Governing Council Global Ministerial Environmental Forum in Bali. In an historic departure for the international system of environmental governance, the parties to the three Conventions would consider adoption of a sweeping set of decisions in Bali that would link their efforts and strengths together, while respecting their legal autonomy. On the closing day of the tripartite meeting, a special media event would be held, “Safe Planet: the United Nations Campaign for Responsibility on Hazardous Chemical and Waste”, to highlight how the three Conventions were cooperating and bringing coherence and engagement to the processes of chemicals and waste management. The United Nations “Body Burden” Forum would be held that day, starting at 2:15 p.m., as the launch event of that global campaign for responsibility. The Forum would introduce a test case of bio-monitoring involving high public officials and celebrities, to raise awareness of the toxic burden increasingly be borne by the life of our planet.

Katharina Kummer Peiry, the Executive Secretary of the Basel Convention, responding to a journalist who wanted to know what action had been taken regarding the toxic chemical dumping in 2006 in Côte d’Ivoire, said they had immediately undertaken efforts within the Secretariat of the Convention to put in place emergency measures to remedy the situation. In that connection, with the help of donor countries, they had set up a programme to implement national legal norms and to build capacity to address such problems. Côte d’Ivoire had been a pilot case and now the Basel Convention had a similar programme in other African countries.

Gaëlle Sévenier of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that WMO was holding three major meetings in Antalya, Turkey, this week. From 15 to 19 February, the World Climate Research Programme would hold a Joint Scientific Committee meeting. A key topic of discussion would be the role of the WCRP research in the Global Framework for Climate Service, including how to develop the next generation of applied climate research. In parallel, the WMO Commission for Climatology was organizing a Technical Conference on Changing Climate and Demands for Climate Services for Sustainable Development, from 16 to 18 February, with some 150 scientists expected to participate from over 80 countries. Finally, the Secretary-General of WMO would be in Antalya at the end of the week, to open the fifteenth session of the Climatology Commission. He would hold a joint press conference with the Minister for Environment of Turkey and the President of the Climatology Commission just after the opening ceremony, which would be held a 10 a.m. on Friday, 19 February, at the Hotel Susesi in Antalya.

H1N1 / WHO Strain Selection Meeting

Gregory Hartl of the World Health Organization said the vaccines strain selection meeting was going on at this moment. On Thursday morning the session, which was being held at the Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG), was open. It would be the one at which the recommendations of the advisers would be announced to let all pharmaceutical manufacturers know at the same time and at the same location what the recommendations on the strains were. The meeting opened at 9 a.m. on Thursday and the recommendation would probably be announced around 11 a.m. The announcement would also be posted on the WHO website more or less simultaneously with the announcement in the room. At 1 p.m. on Thursday there would be a virtual press briefing with Keiji Fukuda to go over the announcement.

Donations Needed for Victims of “Forgotten” Crises

Mr. Lom of IOM said that the massive reconstruction effort that had been ongoing over the last 20 months in Myanmar following the devastation wreaked by Cyclone Nargis was running out of money. Unless IOM could raise another $17 million it would have to close its three offices in the Irawaddy Delta. IOM believed that there were still some 100,000 families (about half a million people) without sufficient shelter to see them through the next wet season. As would be recalled, Cyclone Nargis had left about 2.4 million homeless. So far, IOM had reached about 58,000 households with a community-oriented approach to shelter, offering different packages and support mechanisms. He added that the $17 million would only cover an additional 50,000 households, or just half of those who actually needed help.

Turning attention to another “forgotten” crisis, IOM had launched an appeal last week for $11 million for conflict-displaced people in the north west of Pakistan. In addition to all the other factors effecting the situation after the conflict, the people in the Swat Valley were now suffering from flash floods. IOM was currently using its stockpiles of emergency assistance to deliver aid there, but the stockpiles would expire very soon.

2010 ICT Development Index

Sanjay Acharya of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced that next Tuesday, 23 February, ITU would launch its 2010 ICT Development Index. The report was a useful tool to measure the level and evolution of ICT developments, taking into consideration the situation in both developed and developing countries, and provided a ranking according to performance. In that connection, a press briefing by Sami Al Basheer, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau, would be held in room III next Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. The report would be launched in New York on the same day at 2 p.m. EST. Embargoed copies of the Index would be available at next Friday’s briefing. Looking at some trends, he noted that ITU expected the number of mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide to reach 5 billion in 2010, and also expected to see the number of mobile broadband subscriptions exceed 1 billion globally this year. With current growth rates, web access by people on the move was predicted to exceed web access from desktop computers within the next five years.

Responding to questions, on pricing of mobile phone connections, in particular in developing countries, Mr. Acharya said that the Index did look at price “baskets” around the world. However, the Index did not contain any expert group opinion on radiation levels in mobile devices.

Other

Mr. Garwood of WHO announced a press briefing would be held on Friday, 19 February, at 3.15 p.m. in Room I, on non-communicable diseases, mainly heart disease, stroke, cancer and chronic respiratory disease, in connection with the first global forum of the Global Non-communicable Disease Network.