REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, the Director of the UN Information Service, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for and Representatives of the Human Rights Council, the UN Environment Programme, the Secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Children’s Fund, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration and the World Food Programme.

Horn of Africa

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that in spite of the efforts of humanitarian agencies the situation was not improving, with 750,000 people in Somalia at risk of death without urgent intervention and a nutrition situation in Somalia’s southern regions which would continue to deteriorate through November. Even with a large-scale increase in the humanitarian response the famine could spread and was considered likely to reach the southern regions of Gedo and Juba by December 2011. The mortality rate among internally displaced children under the age of five in Mogadishu was alarmingly high, with an average of 15.43 deaths per 10,000 individuals, said Ms. Byrs, adding that the famine threshold was 2 deaths per 10,000 individuals.

Adrian Edwards of the UN Refugee Agency said that UNHCR was becoming very concerned by the latest escalation of violence in southern Somalia. The renewed clashes between opposing armed groups were further exacerbating the already severe humanitarian situation. UNHCR urged all armed groups and forces in Somalia to avoid targeting civilian areas and to ensure that civilians were not being placed in harm's way. UNHCR had received initial, unconfirmed reports of deaths and scores of injured people. It was especially worried about the fighting and worsening situation around the town of Dobley, on the Somali-Kenyan border. Dobley was the main transit point for Somalis en route to Dadaab refugee camps. UNHCR particularly feared for the well-being and safety of displaced Somalis who were likely to get caught in fighting while fleeing through this part of the country. Its partners in tracking the movements of populations inside Somalia reported that some 65 families made the journey from Dobley to Liboi in Kenya each day en route to Dadaab, while many also used alternate routes. On average, 1,000 new Somali refugees continued to arrive in Dadaab camps every day. These camps were now home to more than 456,000 refugees.

Although UNHCR was yet to ascertain the number of people fleeing from Dobley, it estimated the new displacement to be significant. In addition to having its own local population, Dobley was also a temporary shelter for many internally displaced people from other parts of southern Somalia and farmers displaced from areas around Dobley. UNHCR’s partners on the ground reported that people were moving to the neighbouring districts, and possibly into Kenya. Relentless fighting, human rights abuses, crippling drought and famine had forced more than 300,000 Somalis to leave their country since the beginning of the year. Two thirds of this number had fled over the past four months alone. Many died inside Somalia. Others had perished either en route to safety or upon reaching the camps - weakened by hunger, the gruelling journey on foot and disease.

Before the latest episode of violence, several aid agencies had been providing assistance in Dobley, distributing emergency assistance packages to the vulnerable population. Meanwhile, there had been dozens of new Somali arrivals at the Kenyan border town of Liboi, where they were awaiting transport to the Dadaab refugee camps. Due to heightened tensions and insecurity in the border area humanitarian agencies had not been travelling to Liboi for several days now. UNHCR hoped the convoys transporting weak and exhausted Somali refugees from the border to Dadaab camps would resume as soon as possible.

Jumbe Omari Jumbe of the International Organization for Migration said IOM had carried out the first ever “de-stocking” exercise for the host community in Kulan, Northern Kenya, on 1 October. The exercise involved buying the weakest livestock from the pastoralists so that the reduced numbers of animals matched the available animal feed. This meant families could sustain the livestock that were better able to weather the drought, enabling them to continue their livelihoods. Food supplements were also provided to these remaining animals.

During the event, 500 sheep and goats had been identified for slaughter with supervision from Kenya’s District Livestock Officers. Twenty animals had been slaughtered and the meat had been given to vulnerable families. Twenty animals would be slaughtered each week to ensure a sustained source of meat. Apart from de-stocking, IOM’s programme would also embark on the rehabilitation of water retention structures and wells along livestock migratory routes, the provision and distribution of health kits, and supplementing feed for the livestock.

Gaelle Sévenier of the World Food Programme said WFP had assisted some 7.4 million drought-affected people in the Horn of Africa and was planning to feed 10.9 million people in total. As well as providing food assistance, WFP was also working with Governments and agencies to strengthen the resilience of communities living in drought-prone areas. The Organization had also expanded its cash transfer programme with the objective of helping 500,000 million people. WFP needed US$404 million for its operations in the Horn of Africa region for the next six months. To date, the budget deficit stood at US$299 million.

Côte d’Ivoire

Ms. Sévenier said that WFP had launched a pilot programme that used mobile phone technology to facilitate cash transfers to 54,000 people living in poor districts of Abidjan to assist them to buy food. More than 10,000 vulnerable households in Abobo and Yopougon would receive an SMS text message on their mobiles alerting them to the transaction and allowing them to withdraw money from local cash points of the telecoms provider MTN. The districts had been badly affected in the post-election crisis and the poorest families were struggling to put food on the table. The goal of this pilot project was to make up for the loss of purchasing power of the poorest families in recent months to give them access to a wider choice of food available in local markets.

The unconditional cash transfer would be implemented over two months, with each household receiving a total of US$75 per month, equivalent to the food basket of an average family of five. The initiative had been made possible with money earmarked from a total US$10.7 million donation from USAID towards WFP’s emergency operation in Côte d’Ivoire. Since the beginning of the crisis at the end of 2010, WFP had brought food into the country and provided more than 11,800 metric tons of food assistance to 560,000 vulnerable people.

South Sudan

Mr. Omari Jumbe said that IOM had provided health services to internally displaced people and returnees in five states of South Sudan – Western Equatoria, Central Equatoria, Warrap, Upper Nile, and Western Bahr el Ghazal. However, as well as security challenges, the Organization was facing poor road conditions and had only a few experts, doctors and clinics due to a lack of funding.

Pakistan

Marixie Mercado of the UN Children’s Fund said that the situation in southern Pakistan was very serious, with hundreds of thousands of families affected, and vulnerable children who had already lived though one devastating flood and were now facing the repercussions of another one. Unless this crisis received more attention – meaning funding – things would get worse. The seriousness of the funding gap cried out for media attention. UNICEF was appealing to donors to dig deeper, and those that had already provided funding to dig deeper still. An update on the situation of flood-affected children and women, as well as UNICEF’s work to meet their most urgent needs was at the back of the room.

Mr. Omari Jumbe said that, following a US$1.5 million donation from the Central Emergency Relief Fund, IOM was now racing to procure and distribute 6,000 emergency shelter kits, after having distributed 18,500 similar kits earlier. More emergency help was needed to assist the approximately 5.5 million flood-affected people, particularly the 1.8 million displaced people in the 23 districts of the Sindh province.

Ms. Byrs said the US$357 million appeal was only 11 per cent funded. The health sector was funded to 9 per cent, food security to 14 per cent, shelter to 8 per cent, and water and sanitation to 8 per cent.

Anti-Roma demonstrations in Bulgaria

Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that OHCHR was deeply concerned about the anti-Roma demonstrations that had been occurring in Bulgaria since 23 September, when an ethnic Bulgarian youth had been run over and killed by a van reportedly belonging to a local Roma. The protests had continued into this past weekend, spreading to some 14 towns across the country. OHCHR regretted the death of the young man in the village of Katunitsa and hoped that if the driver of the van was culpable, he would be brought to justice in accordance with the law, and that through such a judicial process, the facts surrounding the young man’s death would be clearly established.

The hate speech that had been fuelling the anti-Roma protests in Bulgaria was of great concern. It was unacceptable for an entire community to be targeted for an offence allegedly committed by an individual. OHCHR called on Bulgarian authorities at the highest political level to publicly restate this principle of individual criminal responsibility. The political leadership must take a strong stance against hate speech and ensure that police officers continue to be deployed in sufficient numbers to protect Roma neighbourhoods from threats of retribution and harassment.

Recently, anti-Roma demonstrations had also taken place in Hungary and the Czech Republic. In all three countries, political parties with extreme nationalist views had reportedly seized the opportunity to stoke up anti-Roma prejudice. In such an atmosphere, inter-ethnic tensions rise, and Roma risked becoming scapegoats of broader dissatisfaction.
Such hostility added to the challenges which millions of Roma in Europe faced in realisation of their economic, social and cultural rights, including education, health and, particularly, employment. OHCHR encouraged the EU and European States to adopt and implement socially inclusive policies.

Tree-shirts helping Europe to “GreenUp” as the world looks towards Rio+20

Isabelle Valentiny of the UN Environment Programme said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood would launch a GreenUp Europe initiative next Tuesday in Brussels. This cross-media campaign, aimed at bringing the green economy closer to Europeans, would help people understand the need for citizen pressure to make Rio+20 a promising conference. A press note was at the back of the room.

WHO Agenda

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization said that WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, former US-President Jimmy Carter and a representative of the UK Department for International Development would give a press conference on guinea-worm disease tomorrow at 10 a.m. in London. They would also discuss funding for a campaign which had been launched several years ago to eradicate this neglected tropical disease. French and English notes were at the back of the room.

Dr. Dirk Engels, the Coordinator of WHO’s Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases, said a guinea-worm was a meter-long worm which was usually housed in the lower parts of the human body – the legs – and caused significant disability. The worm developed within about one year of entering the body and was picked up by drinking unsafe water.

The guinea-worm eradication programme was one of two programmes aiming to eradicate diseases. The particularity of the guinea-worm disease was that there was neither a medicine nor a vaccine; the treatment was mechanical and required rolling out the worm on a stick, bit by bit, and avoiding infection. Eradication could be achieved by spotting potential cases early on, making sure that wounds were bandaged and treatment given, ensuring that affected people did not go into the water to prevent the worm from releasing its larvae, and encouraging people to filter water before drinking.

When the campaign officially started at the end of the 1980s, there were 3.5 million guinea-worm disease cases. Today, there were less than 1,000 cases in only four countries – the Republic of South Sudan, Mali, Ethiopia and Chad. WHO hoped that pledges would be announced at the conference in London tomorrow to provide sufficient funding for WHO to complete eradication.

UNISDR Agenda

Denis McClean of the Secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction said that the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, would arrive on a three-day visit to Pakistan on Thursday, 6 October to meet Government officials, the National Disaster Management Authority and aid donors, as the country was trying to cope with floods which had displaced an estimated 5.4 million people. As UNISDR had produced a flood risk model which had actively predicted the floods last year and this year, Ms. Wahlström would focus on ratcheting up community preparedness measures to combat this increasing phenomenon.

Ms. Wahlström would then travel to Myanmar the following week for another three-day visit at the invitation of the Government. During that time she would engage with senior Government Ministers on a national action plan on disaster risk reduction, and discuss the possibility of introducing a new disaster management law. She would also visit areas badly affected by Cyclon Nargis in 2008.

This year’s International Day for Disaster Reduction, to be observed on 13 October, would focus on children and young people, and particularly the children’s disaster reduction charter developed by UNISDR partners World Vision, Plan International, UNICEF and Save the Children.

UNICEF Nutrition Supplies

Ms. Mercado said that UNICEF’s supply division in Copenhagen was bringing together almost 100 partners in nutrition today to work towards meeting unprecedented demands for nutrition supplies, including ready-to-use therapeutic food, which was used to treat children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Across the Horn of Africa, over 300,000 young children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Multiplied by about 70, this equalled the total number of severely malnourished children – 20 million. Even if the production of ready-to-use therapeutic foods were to increase by 50 per cent in 2012 as expected (compared to 2010), this would only meet 15 per cent of the need.

At the meeting in Copenhagen today, UNICEF was also working on quality assurance with Doctors without Borders and WFP. UNICEF would shortly post the prices of the internationally-procured ready-to-use therapeutic food over the last decade on the internet. UNICEF procured about 80 per cent of the world’s ready-to-use therapeutic food.

ILO Agenda

Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Organization said ILO would shortly publish a report offering economic and social analyses of the situation in Tunisia and inviting the Government to take a series of measures. A press release on this report would be issued today and expert interviews could be arranged.

The twelfth African Regional Meeting would be opened next Tuesday by South African President Jacob Zuma in Johannesburg, South Africa. The meeting would focus particularly on the themes taken up in the report of the ILO Director-General, entitled “Empowering Africa’s Peoples with Decent Work”.

UNHCR Agenda

Mr. Edwards said UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie would address UNHCR’s Executive Committee at 12.30 p.m. in Room XIX at the Palais des Nations. The address was open to accredited Palais correspondents.

Human Rights Council UPR Working Group Agenda

Cédric Sapey of the Human Rights Council said the Council’s Universal Periodic Review Working Group was reviewing the report of Antigua and Barbuda this morning, to be followed by that of Swaziland this afternoon. Tomorrow it would examine the reports of Trinidad and Tobago and Thailand, and on Thursday those of Ireland and Togo. On Friday, the Working Group would discuss the report of Syria (only available in Arabic for the time being).

Human Rights Committees

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Committee on the Rights of the Child had yesterday examined the report of Sweden under the Protocol on the exploitation of children. Having reviewed all reports scheduled for consideration at this session, the Committee would meet in private until Friday. On Friday, at the public closing of the session around noon, the Committee would publish its concluding observations on Italy, the Republic of Korea, Syria, Iceland, Panama, the Seychelles and Sweden.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women had opened its fiftieth session yesterday. It was examining the report of Oman today and would review that of Paraguay tomorrow.

Other

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that UNEP would give a press conference on COP10 Basel Convention at noon in Room III. Later today, starting at around 5.30 p.m., the Co-Chairs of the Geneva International Discussions, as well as Russia and Georgia, would each give a press conference following the seventeenth round of the Geneva International Discussions.

Denis McClean, the new Head of Communications at UNISDR, and Marcia Poole, the new Director of the ILO Department of Communication and Public Information, were introduced to the Geneva press corps.