REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i. of the UN Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was attended by the Spokespersons for the United Nations Refugee Agency, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Nepal Earthquake

Dr. Richard Brennan, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said that devastating effects were being felt in Nepal, following the earthquake which had led to 4,000 deaths and 8,000 injured. The numbers of casualties were likely to increase once more information was gathered. Between five and eight million people were affected. This was a large scale earthquake, and the largest since 1932, whose devastating effects could be felt in all sectors. The big concerns at the moment were rescue and recovery, management of severe injuries, including life threatening injuries, fractures, etc. People who were exposed to minimal shelters and without proper sanitation were at risk of catching infectious diseases. Child bearing women needed to have continued access to obstetric services.

Dr. Brennan stressed that the immediate focus was on rescue and recovery. WHO was working closely with the Government, which had been planning for an event of such type for years. Key steps taken were being developed collaboratively with the Government, and an operations centre was in full swing.

An assessment of needs was ongoing at the moment; there was a reasonably good picture of what was happening in Kathmandu, but it was difficult to see what was going elsewhere. Five main hospitals in the capital were functioning, but were overloaded with the number of patients. A number of hospitals elsewhere had suffered significant damage.

Coordinating international relief efforts was another activity of the WHO, which was also working with the Government to coordinate arrival and dispatch of foreign medical teams. A reception centre existed at the airport and minimal standards for care were ensured. WHO had its own response team, covering a number of areas. Emergency medical supplies for 120,000 people over three months had been provided; medical tents and diarrheal kits were being distributed, while more permanent operations at the district level would be established.

Elisabeth Byrs, for the World Food Programme (WFP), announced that the first cargo plane to fly from Dubai was expected to arrive in Kathmandu but it was still waiting for a landing permit because of the congestion at the airport. On board there were more than 80 metric tonnes of emergency items like tents, banquets, health kits and telecommunication equipment for humanitarian partners, including the WHO, Save the Children, UNHCR and the Italian Government. Moreover, the WFP already had food stocks in the country so they were flying high energy biscuits which were light, easy to distribute and did not need any cooking.

The Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum had donated five Boeing 747 to enable the Dubai International Humanitarian City to deliver relief assistance to Nepal.

Ms. Byrs said there was a logistic challenge, first the congestion in the airport and also most roads were unpassable because of landslides and rockslides. Some trucks had been sent to the Gorkha District, but in some other remote areas the WFP would have to use helicopters and small planes, if possible to land.

As part of pre-disaster measures, the WFP and the United Kingdom Government had inaugurated, one month earlier, a relief application at the Kathmandu Airport which provided telecommunication, satellite imagery, computer facilities for humanitarian workers, and storage facilities. The system was fully operational at the moment.

WFP intended to provide food assistance to 1.4 million people in the following three months. Also logistic support to all UN agencies and NGOs was going to be provided during that challenging operation. The fact that this was a mountainous area and the monsoon was coming might cause more landslides and rockslides.

More details of the operation would be sent out soon in a press release.

Responding to a question on the estimates of what was happening in faraway, unseen areas, Ms. Byrs said that there were some provincial cities with 20-30,000 inhabitants, for which there was still no information. There were five assessment teams on the ground, in addition to aerial surveys being used. Efforts would be made to reach such areas, but there was no real, reliable assessment at the moment.

Christophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), informed that approximately 1,300,000 children were in the need of humanitarian assistance in Nepal. However, because several villages had not been reached, the exact number of children affected could still change. UNICEF had been working in Nepal for years with currently more than 200 staff on the ground. With partners on the ground they identify needs and provide humanitarian assistance. UNICEF was highly preoccupied by hydric diseases for all the families who did not have access to clean water. Mr. Boulierac announced the priorities for UNICEF as follow:

First, administer shelter for vulnerable women and children, particularly before the monsoon season; second, in term of water and sanitation, ensuring access to clean water to also prevent diseases like diarrhoea; third, maintaining education for children by putting up temporary learning spaces; finally, providing a psycho-social support to women and children more vulnerable to trauma because many husbands/fathers were working outside Nepal.

Mr. Boulierac also informed that tons of supplies were being prepared in Copenhagen for air lifts. Those items would help stave off water-bound diseases for families who had little access to safe water. UNICEF was also providing tents for the Ministry of Health to be used as hospitals, and they made sure supplementary feeding was distributed to children under 5 years of age, all of this in coordination with the WFP.
It was not premature to say that in the long term Nepal would need to rebuild its infrastructure and it would require a long-term international support.

Ariane Rummery, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), noted that an airlift was supposed to arrive in Kathmandu. She added that an estimated 8 million people had been affected by the earthquake and its aftershocks and that many of these people were living in makeshift camps and open areas in the rain as their homes had been damaged or even because they had been too afraid to go home amidst continuing aftershocks. Shelter materials were urgently needed and added; the airlift from Dubai would be bringing more plastic sheets and solar lamps to the 30,000 quake survivors in need, as identified by the authorities.

Ms. Rummery then explained that the UNHCR had emptied its warehouse in eastern Nepal and sent five trucks carrying plastic sheets and solar lamps for over 40,000 quake survivors in three districts east of Kathmandu. In the morning, the UNHCR staff had handed over some items to local authorities in Sindhuli, where at least nine people had been killed and some 5,000 homes destroyed during the disaster. The UNHCR team was proceeding north-east towards Ramechhap, but the road had been blocked by a landslide and the transfer of the items to other vehicles had been arranged mid-way. She added that other aid trucks were on their way to Okhaldunga in a neighbouring zone.

The UNHCR’s emergency assistance was part of an inter-agency response to the earthquake. The country had been hosting refugees and asylum seekers for decades in its eastern areas; those groups which represented around 30,000 people had thankfully not been directly affected by the earthquake.

Sarah Bel, for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), reiterated that only partial information was available on the situation outside of Kathmandu. Rain was likely to exacerbate the situation. UNDP was meeting with key Government departments, in order to get information at the district level and assess the needs, which would allow access for search and rescue. UNDP was, for example, arranging for debris and rubble removal, which would also serve the purpose of providing people with income. UNDP was leading on such activities and also supporting local authorities on early recovery work. The focus was on supporting the community in getting back to their normal livelihoods.

Ms. Bel added that the UNDP was working with the DP DHL to ensure that goods reached people in need as soon as possible. Airport management in Kathmandu had been trained to respond to such logistic challenges caused by disasters. Nonetheless, it seemed that there was a lot of congestion at the airport. DP DHL had sent a team which should work with the airport on the ground to improve the situation.

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that the main headline was that it was the race against time, as humanitarian agencies were working around the clock to reach people and communities. There was still no assessment of needs and requirements in rural areas outside of Kathmandu. Nepal was a difficult country to access in terms of geography.

In response to the devastation, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos had released USD 15 million today through the Central Emergency Response Fund to enable humanitarian aid organizations to rapidly scale up operations and provide immediate assistance to people in desperate need.

The Government was in need of coordination and help. OCHA teams had been based at the airport since 26 April, mostly at the airport. Efforts were underway to decongest the airport; some flights had had to return because they simply could not land. There were 21 humanitarian teams in the country now and others on the standby, waiting to come in. Preparations done with the Nepalese authorities were now paying off, so the response was going relatively smooth, but there were still challenges.

Recipient humanitarian agencies working with their partners would prioritise the most immediate needs, including logistics, shelter, water and health. More information on the grants would be available in the coming days. While the USD 15 million funding injection from CERF would boost immediate assistance to people in need, additional resources were vital to support and sustain aid efforts in the coming months.

Asked if the UN was preparing a joint appeal, Mr. Laerke said that the Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator in the country would be coordinating a flash appeal, expected to be issued shortly.

On the question of planes not being able to land in Kathmandu, Mr. Laerke said that the evidence on some commercial flights was mostly anecdotal, and the issue seemed to be at least partly connected to weather conditions.

On the numbers of deaths and injuries of children, Mr. Boulierac said that there were no reliable figures to share at the moment.

Asked on how many people had fled Kathmandu due to the lack of help and fear of further quakes, Mr. Laerke stated that the Nepalese who wanted to leave would be doing so on commercial flights, which was not being tracked at the moment.

Tarik Jašareviæ, for the World Health Organization (WHO), added that people who had sustained real serious injuries and required surgeries which could not be provided at the time. Many people had fractures and spinal injuries in places where they were hard to reach. Rescue teams had a short window of opportunity to reach and save some of the survivors.

On whether the UN was helping the Government with aid distribution, Mr. Laerke responded that there was a team supporting the Government with exactly that. The structures were in place, and the system was working, with the Humanitarian/Resident Coordinator on the top.

Mr. Laerke said that individual agencies were mobilizing resources, and reiterated that a flash appeal would be issued in the coming days.

Detention centres in Libya

Ms. Rummery stated In Libya, UNHCR and its partners had been assisting some of the 1,242 people rescued at sea from unseaworthy boats or intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard in waters near Tripoli over the previous 10 days, who had mostly been sent to immigration detention centres.

That included a group of more than 200 people from the Horn of Africa intercepted at Tajura (16 km east of Tripoli), four of whom had serious burn injuries from a gas explosion two weeks earlier at an unknown location where they had been held by smugglers before boarding a boat bound for Europe. The group had been taken to an immigration detention centre in Tripoli where medical staff from UNHCR’s partner on the ground had treated burns and arranged the transfer to hospital of four seriously injured people. That included a 20-year-old mother with extensive burns to her arms and legs and her two-year-old son with extensive burns to his face.

UNHCR was aware of at least 2,663 migrants or asylum-seekers, including women and children, spread across eight immigration detention facilities across Libya run by the Department for Combatting Illegal Migration, which was a significant increase from the 1,455 people in detention a month earlier. The main nationalities in the centres were Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians and Sudanese as well as people from various West African countries. UNHCR could generally organize the release of refugees and asylum-seekers registered with its office within a few days, although the Agency’s capacity to register new arrivals to Libya was limited in the current security environment. UNHCR also advocated for the release of very vulnerable people, like pregnant women and also for alternatives to detention, if possible.

UNHCR local staff and partners who visited immigration detention centres said conditions were poor, with urgent needs for more medical help, improved ventilation and sanitation as well as relief items. In some centres, more than 50 people were crowded into rooms designed for 25. Temperatures were on the rise, as were the mosquitos which, combined with poor ventilation, could spread disease. At the request of local authorities, UNHCR was helping to ease the dire conditions.

Ms. Rummery specified that there were some 36,000 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with the UNHCR in Libya, who were affected by the growing violence and lawlessness in the country. Among those, almost half were Syrians, while Palestinians, Eritreans, Iraqis, Somalis, Sudanese made up significant groups. Despite the volatile situation in Libya, UNHCR continued to help refugees and asylum-seekers through its national staff and NGO partners. UNHCR continued to deliver aid like mattresses, blankets, clothing and kitchen utensils to thousands of internally displaced Libyans, and was supporting municipal authorities to track displacement and assess needs. Some 400,000 Libyans had been displaced by various waves of violence, according to UN figures.

Responding to a question regarding the detainees and the reasons why they were held and what would be the alternatives to detention, Ms. Rummery explained that those people were not prisoners but migrants who were arrested for being illegally in the country. She added that the alternatives would probably be having space to work with those people mainly through community based systems (for instance, ethnic communities), while knowing that the operational possibilities in Libya were not great at the moment.

On a question about what was going on in the detention centres in which UNHCR was not able to go, Ms. Rummery responded that the UNHCR was willing and trying to get access to all of those centres but, it had still been work in process, mainly due to the current situation in Libya.

Responding to a question regarding the woman who had been burned and if there would be an investigation on what exactly had happened, Ms. Rummery noted that the incident had already been reported in Italy where the group, from which she was a part of, arrived, but that she did not have more information on that group and where they currently were.

On the position of the United Nations concerning the willingness of the European Union to face the immigration struggles by confronting smugglers, Ms. Rummery explained that the UNHCR and other organisations had been calling on European nations to increase efforts to save lives and to find other channels for those people to get to Europe through legal means, whether they were asylum seekers, refugees or migrants.

When asked if the UNHCR had the financial capacity to face the crisis, Ms. Rummery answered that the UNHCR and other agencies were underfunded.

Burundian refugees in Rwanda

Ms. Rummery informed that, over the weekend, the number of Burundian refugees crossing into Rwanda had jumped significantly, with over 5,000 refugees entering the country in just two days. According to the Government of Rwanda, since the beginning of April, nearly 21,000 Burundians, mostly women and children had fled to Rwanda saying that they had experienced intimidation and threats of violence linked to the upcoming elections.

The previous week, the official list of candidates to run in the Burundian Presidential elections on 26 June had been announced, which had sparked demonstrations and violence in the nation’s capital.

The Government of Rwanda had allocated land in Mahama, in the Eastern Province to open a new refugee camp. UNHCR and its partners were working moving refugees to the new Mahama refugee camp in daily convoys of up to 1,500 people. Due to the sharp increase of new arrivals, the conditions in the two reception centres, Bugesera and Nyanza, had become more and more congested and the UNHCR was expecting to relocate all refugees by 1 May.

Since conducting the rapid assessment mission of the new site in Mahama sector, the UNHCR had immediately mobilized its teams and partners to erect over 450 family tents to accommodate over 4,000 people, 7 hangars, 80 latrines, 80 showers, a health post and security post.

Ms. Rummery informed that Rwanda was already hosting more than 74,000 refugees, mostly from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

When asked if the refugees in Rwanda were mainly ethnic Tutsis and if one could expect similar events to those of 20 years ago, Ms. Rummery and Karin de Gruijl, also for the UNHCR, explained that they had no figures about the ethnic dimension of the refugees who had fled in the last days. Ms. de Gruijl noted that the refugees themselves explained that they had been targeted mainly because they were part of opposition.

Responding to a question on who was in charge of the refugee camps in Rwanda, Ms. Rummery noted that the UNHCR was helping the Government, which was in charge of the camps. Ms. de Gruijl added that Rwanda was ready to receive 50,000 refugees.

On a question whether taking care of refugees was treating the consequences rather than the causes of the problems of Burundi, Ms. de Gruijl responded that as a humanitarian organization, the UNHCR’s role was to call on the neighbouring countries to keep the borders open to make sure that if people had to flee, they could flee and that it was what had been seen so far in the region.

Mr. Fawzi referred to the statement by the Secretary-General on Burundi, which had been posted online this morning.

Geneva activities

Mr. Jašareviæ informed that a new report by the World Health Organization would be published on 29 April capturing countries’ own assessments of their response to the threat of antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance. Antimicrobial resistance had been detected in all parts of the world, and it threatened the effective prevention and treatment of infections caused by bacteria (e.g. gonorrhoea), parasites (e.g. malaria), viruses (e.g. HIV), and fungi (e.g. Candida). A press conference would take place in Press Room I on 29 April at 10:30 a.m. The speaker would be Dr Charles Penn, WHO Coordinator on antimicrobial resistance. The press release would be under embargo until after the press conference.

Mr. Jašareviæ added that the WHO 2015 Strategic Response Plan for Ebola was being released today.

Mr. Boulierac said that UNICEF was launching a new report “Teaching and learning about child rights: A study of implementation in 26 countries”. Children in industrialized countries largely failed to learn about their rights. On that occasion, a press conference would take place in Press Room I, on 30 April at 10:30 a.m. Speakers would be Marta Arias, Advocacy and Policy Specialist, UNICEF Geneva; Marie Werham, Child Rights Education Consultant, UNICEF Geneva; and Lee Jerome, Lecturer in Education, School of Education, Queen's University in Belfast.

Catherine Huissoud, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) announced publication of a roadmap on the restructuring of sovereign debt. Five key principles were legitimacy, impartiality, good faith, transparency and sustainability. A press release would be issued shortly. Answering a question, Ms. Huissoud said that the proposal was put on a table as an idea for debtor States on renegotiating their debts.

Mr. Fawzi said that on 5 May, Special Envoy for Syria Staffan da Mistura would hold a briefing on the Syrian talks.

Mr. Fawzi also informed that the UN Secretary-General was at the Vatican attending a Workshop on the Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity” at the moment, after which he would go to Paris, and meet with the French President and Foreign Minister, as well as the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).

Mr. Fawzi stated that the World Press Freedom Day would take place on 3 May. On that occasion, an event would be held in New York on 1 May. This year, the focus would be on the safety of journalists, journalism in the digital age and the portrayal of women in the media. A high-level session from New York would be webcast live.

Spokespersons for the International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration, International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction were also present, but did not brief.
The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/unog280415