REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Alessandra Vellucci, the Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the Information Service, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.

Libya

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the UN's $ 310 million appeal for Libya was 41 per cent funded, with $ 128 million received, but additional funds were needed urgently. A meeting had been held in Geneva at 11 a.m. this morning to explain the situation to donors and request the help of the international community, as United Nations agencies needed money for their evacuation operations. The United Nations had established a presence in Benghazi on 9 April to assess and respond to the humanitarian needs, adding to the presence of 12 international non-governmental organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as numerous local associations. An information note on this was at the back of the room and there was another note on the humanitarian situation in Misrata, where medical personnel and medication were urgently needed.

Andrej Mahecic of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that UNHCR was facing a critical shortage of funds for its operations in Libya and neighbouring countries. Unless funds were swiftly committed by donor countries, this shortfall would likely impact vital humanitarian assistance for tens of thousands of people displaced by the recent fighting. UNHCR had for over $ 68.5 million to cover the initial three to four months of the emergency. To date it had received $ 39.4 million, all of which had been spent or committed. UNHCR was calling on donor countries to urgently fund this shortfall. Of the amount received, $18.4 million had been contributed towards the joint UNHCR-IOM humanitarian evacuation of over 100,000 third country nationals from Egypt and Tunisia. Millions more had been spent on airlifting urgent aid supplies to Tunisia and Egypt, offering shelter and protection for tens of thousands of people awaiting evacuation, regularly trucking supplies into Libya and providing financial assistance to refugees and other vulnerable groups in Libya. Throughout Libya, UNHCR had identified a need to expand activities to provide assistance to tens of thousands of displaced people and thousands of refugees who depended on UNHCR for help.

Mr. Mahecic said that UNHCR had a team of national staff in Tripoli, who were doing their best to offer assistance to refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR. UNHCR considered the humanitarian needs in western Libya to be significant. UNHCR and partners were ready to offer humanitarian support in the west if and when permission was granted by the government. UNHCR also currently have emergency staff on mission in Tobruk and Benghazi in eastern Libya as part of an inter-agency team. Local authorities had identified over 35,000 displaced people, mostly from Ajdabiyya and others from Brega. They said that the actual number was likely to be around 100,000, since the population of Ajdabiyya was 120,000 and most were thought to have left. While a few thousand have crossed into Egypt, the majority were displaced in Benghazi and Tobruk. According to the authorities, most of their basic needs were being addressed, thanks to the generosity of the local community. However, signs of strain were beginning to appear as a result of the deteriorating economic situation, compounded by the fact that state salaries have not been paid for two months. The local authorities say more and more displaced people are approaching them for assistance every day. It was vital that UNHCR's ongoing operations in Egypt and Tunisia were funded so that it could continue to support the governments of both countries to keep their borders open for all those fleeing the conflict.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said she had no press note on the rescue mission that had reached Misrata yesterday as contacting the team on the ground had been very difficult. An update would hopefully be provided later today. While the ship had docked at the port of Misrata at about 4.30 p.m. local time yesterday, the shelling had made it impossible to start offloading the 400 tons of humanitarian aid. If this was expected to be very time-consuming, people might be evacuated from Misrata with the aid on board. IOM's priority was saving the lives of the migrants, who were in an extremely bad condition after a long time without food, clean water or medical support and living in the open for almost two months. Unless these people were evacuated from Misrata, IOM was concerned about their future.

Ms. Pandya said that the ship only had a capacity to evacuate 800 people at a time. When IOM's team arrived in Misrata yesterday it had been estimated that around 6,500 people in the port area needed evacuation, but it now turned out that there were at least 8,300. Of these, 3,400 were from Egypt, 3,000 from Niger, 1,000 from Ghana, hundreds from Sudan and Bangladesh, and some from Iraq and India, among other countries. IOM lacked the funds to carry out live-saving operations and was again forced to switch to low operational mode on Monday because money had run out. The organization had only enough money to carry out two sea evacuations from Misrata (evacuating about 1,600 people), although many more evacuations would be needed. IOM estimated that $ 5 million would be needed to evacuate the 8,300 people from Misrata.

Ms. Pandya said IOM had received reports of about 29,000 Chadians – mostly families, women and children – who were stranded in the Southern Libyan town of Gatrun, about 1,000 kilometers from the Chadian Border, without enough food, water or shelter. The Chadian Government believed that a total of about 275,000 Chadians were still stranded in Libya. The funding could not come fast enough, Ms. Pandya underscored.

Côte d’Ivoire

Mr. Mahecic said that in Western Cote d’Ivoire, and with the security situation apparently calming, UNHCR staff were reporting large groups of internally displaced people living in alarming humanitarian conditions. UNHCR believed that major reconciliation efforts would be needed for internally displaced persons and Ivorian refugees in neighbouring countries to be able to return home in safety and dignity. An estimated 200,000 people in western Côte d’Ivoire had been displaced by post-election violence over the past four months. Insecurity had prevented access to many of them. Medical staff had also deserted the region. Although fighting appeared to have ended, ethnic tensions were still high and many people remain in hiding in the bush. In Duékoué, 27,000 people were currently sheltered at the overcrowded Catholic mission after fleeing villages within a 40 kilometre radius of the town. This week, five of these people had died from malaria.

Mr. Mahecic said that many of the displaced told UNHCR staff they were waiting to see security restored in their areas of origin so that they can return home. Some had asked to be escorted back to their villages, for fear of harassment at checkpoints. There had been reports over the past 10 days of rape and physical abuse by armed men along the Duékoué to Bangolo route. Other internally displaced person, traumatized by the recent massacres in Duékoué, said they wanted to leave the town to seek out their families in other areas. Elsewhere in the west, a UNHCR team had recently visited the department of Zouhan-Hounien and one of its sub-prefectures, Bin Houye, near the border with Liberia. They had met more than 1,000 displaced people, mainly originating from Guiglo, Blolequin and Toulepleu. Some had been staying on the premises of a Catholic church and the Ivorian Red Cross. Others had been found in a youth centre in Bin-Houye. All three internally displaced person sites lacked clean water, latrines and electricity. Some of the displaced had been sleeping on the bare floor or on bags of cocoa.

Mr. Mahecic said that some internally displaced persons were hoping to be relocated to sites with more space and humanitarian aid. Others were asking for help to rebuild their damaged homes. UNHCR was working to increase its presence in Western Côte d’Ivoire to effectively respond to these needs. So far, it had been concentrating on aid distribution, as well as registering and profiling the internally displaced persons in Duékoué to identify their needs and intentions to return. Meanwhile, nearly 6,000 Ivorians had crossed into neighbouring Liberia’s Grand Gedeh county since Monday. As supporters of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, these ethnic Guéré refugees – who had been waiting at the border for weeks - said they had crossed into Liberia by foot following news of Gbagbo’s arrest and reports of reprisal attacks in Abidjan. Some had arrived in Liberia malnourished. UNHCR and partners had been providing nutritional support. With this week’s new influx, there were now more than 150,000 Ivorian refugees in Liberia, in addition to over 13,000 hosted in other West African countries.

Emilia Casella of the World Food Programme said that WFP had now been able to get to the site of its warehouse in Abidjan and was surprised and relieved to see that some food may be recoverable. WFP staff in the field had reported that assessments were ongoing, and that all of the oil and rice were stolen. But some quantities of high-nutrient corn soya blend, a supplementary food for malnourished children, may apparently be recoverable, along with some peas and salt. WFP had also been informed by UN air operations that there were plans for flights into Abidjan tomorrow, with rice from Bamako, as rice was urgently needed in Abidjan for distribution to the most affected people. In addition, further flights with rice were planned from Niamey to Monrovia, as WFP was trying to get more food into Liberia as quickly as possible. There would be further flights after that, as well as some for partner organizations such as UNICEF and WHO.

Ms. Casella said that a joint WFP, FAO, Caritas and Save the Children assessment team had visited several areas, including Danane, Guiglo and Daloua. A WFP staff member on the ground said that “People felt a sense of abandonment. When they see our assessment teams coming in, it reassures them, and that’s when they come out of their hiding and share their stories and their plight with us. They come asking for assistance. They came out of the forest, as well as out of hiding in homes. These are desperate people who must be helped at the earliest.” WFP had managed to get some trucks into Côte d’Ivoire from Burkina Faso, and food distributions were now starting in a number of communities to provide high-energy biscuits. According to WFP staff on the ground, some “towns are almost deserted and people are still hiding in the bushes or have fled across to Liberia. There is a real need to focus on social cohesion and reconciliation, which should pave the way for people to get back to normal life, working in the fields and sending their children to school.”

Faléla Chaib of the World Health Organization said the humanitarian situation in Côte d’Ivoire remained one of concern as many hospitals in Abidjan continued to be closed. Only 6 out of 10 hospitals were operating, with the help of international organizations. Several sanitary centres had been looted and remained closed in the west of the country, including hospitals in Guiglo and elsewhere, and WHO was concerned at the lack of medication and staff in many health centres. Hospital staff had gone unpaid for more than three months, both in Abidjan and elsewhere. This, as well as insecurity, contributed to the fact that the hospitals were not running in most of the towns in Côte d’Ivoire. WHO had transported 6 tons of medication from Ouagadougou to Bouake, as well as 4 tons of medication from Accra to the western and Abidjan regions. A public health expert team with staff from Geneva and the WHO Regional Office for Africa had also arrived in the country to participate in the UNDAC mission to assess the situation in Central and Western Côte d’Ivoire, as well as Abidjan. WHO also organized the distribution of medicine which had recently arrived in Abidjan and the West.

Yemen

Mr. Mahecic said that sixteen people had drowned and another five were missing following two separate incidents this week in the Gulf of Aden. Nearly all victims were Somalis fleeing violence and human rights abuses in their home country.

The survivors of the first incident told UNHCR that during the voyage they had seen a cargo vessel and a foreign naval ship. They said that the naval ship had approached their boat but ignored their cries for help. This was most disturbing. UNHCR appealed to all shipmasters in the Gulf of Aden to uphold the longstanding tradition of rescue at sea and helping vessels in distress.

UNHCR was alarmed by a growing number of deaths in the Gulf of Aden this year. Eighty-nine people were known to have drowned in January and February alone - compared to 15 only during the whole of 2010. UNHCR also noted with great concern the resurgence of violence and inhumane treatment by smugglers of the refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants that they were transporting. The deadly record for the first three months was a stark manifestation of this trend. More than 6,500 Somalis and 18,800 Ethiopians had arrived in Yemen by boat so far this year, said Mr. Mahecic.

Ms. Pandya said that today and tomorrow IOM was resuming evacuations of irregular Ethiopian migrants stranded in Yemen in appalling conditions. The operation, funded by the UN's Humanitarian Response Fund in Addis Ababa, planned to help some 2,400 Ethiopians to return home in the coming weeks. A first group of 120, including children and elderly people, was due to arrive in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, tomorrow, 16 April. On arrival, the returnees would be provided with accommodation, and medical and psychosocial support. IOM was working together with UNICEF and other local partners.

IOM had previously evacuated a total of 2,770 Ethiopian migrants stranded in Northern Yemen between November 2010 and mid-February, when the operation had to stop due to lack of funds. Since then, IOM had registered nearly 4,000 Ethiopian migrants at Haradh, on the border with Saudi Arabia, where it had a centre which provided shelter for the vulnerable, many of whom were hungry and exhausted by their long trek to the north of the country. Unable to continue their journey north due to tightened border controls by the Saudi authorities or to return home without any resources, migrants were frequently left stranded in Haradh without adequate food, shelter and water, and many wanted to return home.

Ms. Pandya said that IOM staff at the Haradh centre reported that the situation had deteriorated significantly in the past few months. Bodies of migrants who had died from hunger or been killed by smugglers had been thrown into the IOM compound at night. The number of irregular migrants landing in Yemen from the Horn of Africa, mainly Ethiopians in search of work and some asylum-seekers from Somalia and elsewhere, had dramatically increased in recent months, as human smugglers took advantage of the local political instability. IOM had also observed growing numbers of unaccompanied minors among irregular migrants entering the country. Their testimony suggested that they were easy prey for criminal groups, and were often subject to physical and mental abuse, as well as labour exploitation. In some cases, family members in Ethiopia had been asked to pay a ransom for their release. IOM urgently needed international donors to support the centre, the work of its partners UNHCR and WFP, and to fund this return operation.

Afghanistan

Ms. Casella said WFP lacked about half of what it needed to carry out its programme in Afghanistan, a programme that fed upwards of 7.3 million people a year. Due to the decrease in funds, WFP expected a critical pipeline break for wheat in June and a critical pipeline break for vegetable oil and beans in July and August. This meant that WFP was looking at scaling back school feeding in Afghanistan by half. After that, it would most possibly need to scale back specialized nutrition programmes for malnourished children under the age of 5 by one third.

If donors did not respond swiftly, by August WFP would possibly be forced to reduce or suspend parts of its Afghanistan operation. This was of particular concern as there had been little rainfall in Afghanistan this year, which could impact the wheat harvest. WFP's shortfall in Afghanistan was $ 257 million.

New Humanitarian Food Security Platform launched

Ms. Casella said that WFP and FAO put out a release today, available at the back of the room, to announce a new humanitarian food security platform. The global support team included FAO, WFP, non-governmental organizations, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, as well as other humanitarian organizations.

Food security clusters were already helping to coordinate food security responses in more than 25 countries worldwide that had been affected by large-scale natural disasters, conflicts or protracted crisis, said Ms. Casella.

But from now, country-level food security clusters and their members would be able to draw upon support in terms of tools and guidance for coordinating responses more effectively, filling gaps in human resources, capacity building, improved information and knowledge management, and better coordinating advocacy on food security responses.




UNECE Agenda

Jean Rodriguez of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe said UNECE’s Executive Secretary would travel to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia, together with the UN Secretary-General. The visit to Chernobyl and the participation in the Summit on Safe and Innovative Use of Nuclear Energy were among the highlights of these visits. Many new nuclear plants were planned around the world, notably in Europe, and environmental impact assessments should be discussed and conducted. This was very relevant to UNECE, as it had a convention on this subject, and because several parties to it had alerted their neighbours that the provisions of the convention must be respected.

Mr. Rodriguez said UNECE would give a press conference on addressing air pollution and climate change by reducing black carbon and ozone emissions, to take place at 12 p.m. today in Press Room 1. Discussions would notably focus on initiatives taken in the framework of the UNECE convention on atmospheric pollution, and on adding a substance to the list of substances whose emissions should be reduced.

UNECE would also host a conference on public-private partnerships next Monday 18 and Tuesday, 19 April, bringing together participants from some 40 countries around the world. The conference would be opened in Room XIX on Monday morning with participants such as the Health Minister of the Philippines, the Minister of Economic Regulation of Kyrgyzstan and the President of Saudi Arabia’s National Water Company. The conference would notably discuss the establishment of a center of excellence on public-private partnerships within UNECE.

UNCTAD Agenda

Catherine Sibut-Pinote of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said the French Minister for Cooperation would speak to UNCTAD Member States at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday in Room XIX to present the development policies of France’s G20 presidency. The G20 countries had mandated UNCTAD, as well as other organizations, to monitor the impacts of the recent crisis, notably a possible surge in protectionism. Journalists were invited to attend the meeting.

UNCTAD Member States had reached agreement yesterday night that the theme for UNCTAD XIII, to be held in Doha in 2012, would be “Development-Centered Globalization”. The UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General had underlined that the economic and financial crisis that the world has faced since 2008 called for a change in the way development policies are thought about. It was time to rethink global economic governance and move towards equitable, shared and sustainable development. A press release would be distributed shortly, said Ms. Sibut-Pinote.

Other

Ms. Vellucci said that the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities would close its first session today, which was dedicated to the examination of a State Party report. The concluding observations on the report of Tunisia should be made public after the Committee’s closing session, to be held later today, and a roundup release would be issued.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had yesterday arrived in the Czech Republic for a two-day visit, during which he would meet the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the Prime Minister, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Ban would then travel to Budapest, Hungary, for another two-day visit, meeting with the President and the Prime Minister. This was followed by a visit to Ukraine, where Mr. Ban would hold high-level meetings and take part in a Summit on Safe and Innovative Use of Nuclear Energy. As indicated previously, the Secretary-General would also visit Chernobyl, together with the President of Ukraine, before travelling to Moscow, Russia, for meetings with President Dmitriy Medvedev and Mr. Sergej Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The 2010 UNOG annual report was available at the back at the room. The report summarized last year’s activities, including those regarding journalists.

On another note, Ms. Vellucci said that almost 24,000 Swiss Francs had been gathered by the UNOG fund raising activities for Japan.

Ms. Vellucci said that Reena Ghelani, OCHA's Deputy Head of Office, would give a press conference on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at 12.30 p.m. in Press Room 1 on Monday 18 April.