REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Refugee Agency, and the International Organization for Migration.

UN Secretary-General

Mr. Fawzi announced that the Secretary-General would be in Geneva on 8 April to open the Conference on the Prevention of Violent Extremism, and to co-chair the Conference with the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, Didier Burkhalter. The Conference was being co-organized by the UN and the Government of Switzerland, and would provide an opportunity for the international community to share experiences and good practices in addressing the drivers of violent extremism, and to build support for the plan of action. A list of countries and organizations being represented had been circulated. In all, 104 delegations from Member States had registered, and 32 Member States would be represented at the ministerial level. The High Commissioner for Human Rights was also on the list of speakers.

The Secretary-General would hold a joint stakeout with Minister Burkhalter on 8 April at 1 p.m. in the exhibition area opposite Room XX.

Geneva activities

Conference on Disarmament and Committees

Mr. Fawzi said that the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities would end in the morning of 5 April its review of the report of Slovakia (begun on 4 April). In the afternoon, it would begin reviewing the report of Serbia. Other countries whose reports were to be reviewed during the current session were Lithuania and Uganda. During the session (29 March/21 April), the Committee would also have, on 19 April, a day of general discussion on the right to independent living and to be included in the community.

Press conferences and other announcements

Mr. Fawzi announced a press conference held by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 5 April at 11:30 a.m. in Room III, on the launch of WHO’s Humanitarian Response Plans 2016. The Plans would profile the health situation in more than 22 countries facing protracted emergencies, and would outline how WHO and partners planned to provide lifesaving health services, and what funds were needed to do this work. The speaker would be Dr Rick Brennan, Director of WHO’s Department of Emergency Risk Management and Humanitarian Response.

Tarik Jasarevic, for the World Health Organization (WHO), reminded the press of the 6 April press briefing at 11 a.m. for World Health Day (7 April), and of the first-ever WHO Global report on diabetes, available under embargo until 6 April at 9 p.m. A copy of the report could be obtained by contacting WHO media enquiries on mediainquiries@who.int. The speakers at the press briefing would be Dr Oleg Chestnov, Assistant Director-General, WHO Cluster of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health, and Dr Etienne Krug, Director, Director, WHO’s Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention.

Cécile Pouilly, for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), announced that on 8 April, a meeting of experts would take place in Room XII from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., on the impact of torture on children, and would be opened by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. It would be part of a broader campaign on helping victims of torture. Experts would be available for interviews. The experts present at the meeting had worked with some 50,000 victims of torture, trying to help them to overcome the trauma and a booklet had been prepared with their testimonials. Many of the victims had come from Syria and Iraq.

Syria

Mr. Fawzi announced that the Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura was continuing his consultations, and intended to resume the Intra-Syrian Talks as planned as of the week of 11 April. On 5 April, the Ceasefire Taskforce was meeting at 10 a.m. for two hours. The Humanitarian Taskforce’s next meeting would be held on 7 April, probably followed by a stakeout by Jan Egeland around 1 p.m. Mr. Fawzi clarified that those were proximity talks and that delegations would be arriving at various moments, and the meetings would be held as of the week of 11 April. In response to a question, Mr. Fawzi said that every delegation with whom the Special Envoy had met had expressed its intention to continue the Intra-Syrian Talks process.

Yemen

Mr. Fawzi reminded the press that Yemeni-Yemeni talks would resume in Kuwait on 18 April, and Special Envoy Ismail Cheikh Ould Ahmed was continuing his preparations. The parties to the conflict had agreed to a nationwide cessation of hostilities, starting on 10 April at midnight. The Special Envoy had said that with political will, good faith and balance, they could take this opportunity to end the conflict, and pave the way towards a permanent and durable end of the war.

Iraq

In response to a question, Mr. Fawzi said that of course UNAMI was conscious of the siege of Fallujah and that it was a humanitarian tragedy. He would send out recent comments from OCHA on the subject.

Malawi

Cécile Pouilly, for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said that OHCHR was concerned about the increasing number of people killed in mob attacks in Malawi. Over the last two months, at least nine separate incidents leading to the death of 16 people had been reported across the country.

On 28 March, a mob had stormed a police station, taking a man accused of murder out of his cell and killing him in Dedza, a city located some 85 km away from the capital, Lilongwe. In by far the worst incident reported this year, seven people accused of possessing human bones had been attacked and set on fire by a mob on 1 March in Southern Malawi’s border district of Nsanje. On 25 January, four elderly members of the same family had been beaten and killed by a mob in Neno District, after being accused of using witchcraft to kill a 17-year-old woman by lightning. In a separate incident, on 3 February, residents of a township in Blantyre, Malawi’s second largest city, had set fire to a Court, apparently out of fear that it would grant bail to three men suspected of murder.

OHCHR welcomed President Arthur Mutharika’s 30 March statement strongly condemning those crimes and calling on all citizens, NGOs and Government agencies to support the Malawi police in its fight against mob killings in accordance with the rule of law. OHCHR urged the authorities in Malawi to act promptly to identify and prosecute those involved in mob killings, and to offer remedy to victims. OHCHR also urged the authorities to address the root causes of such attacks and to launch an awareness campaign to encourage people to report crimes to police rather than take justice into their own hands.

In response to a question, Ms. Pouilly said that some of the attacks had been linked to witchcraft, but not necessarily all of them, and that it was very difficult to find precise information on each and every one of the attacks, as some of them had taken place in remote locations. OHCHR was aware of at least one attack against a person with albinism. The Independent expert on people with albinism would be travelling to Malawi from 19 to 29 April and would look into the issue. It was hard to speculate on the reasons for the rise in attacks and the increasing death toll. The lack of trust of the population in the justice system was an issue, and there had been serious allegations that police forces had not intervened when the killings had been taking place. It was also difficult to obtain information on the prosecution of perpetrators.

Central America

Adrian Edwards, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said that the number of people fleeing violence in Central America, much of it gang-related, had surged to levels not seen since the region had been wracked by armed conflicts in the 1980s. Action was urgently needed to ensure that unaccompanied children and others received the protection to which they were entitled.
In 2015 alone 3,423 people, most of them from El Salvador and Honduras, had sought asylum in Mexico. This had been a 164 per cent increase over 2013 and a 65 per cent increase since 2014. Costa Rica, for example, had registered 2,203 asylum claims in 2015 – a 176 per cent increase over 2013 and a 16 per cent increase since 2014. Those were mainly people arriving from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – the “Northern Triangle of Central America. In Belize, where the population was less than 400,000, 633 people had sought asylum in 2015, up ten-fold over 2014. Other countries in the region, notably Nicaragua and Panama, were also seeing similar sharp increases in asylum requests. As in previous years, preliminary data from 2015 showed that the United States remained the main country receiving asylum applications from the Northern Triangle, on track to receive over 250 per cent more than in 2013 and almost twice the number of 2014.
UNHCR considered the situation in Central America to be a protection crisis. UNHCR was particularly concerned about the rising numbers of unaccompanied children and women on the run who faced forced recruitment into criminal gangs, sexual- and gender-based violence and murder. Large-scale violence and persecution at the hands of armed criminal actors had become, along with poverty and unemployment, primary drivers of refugee and migrant flows from the Northern Triangle. That reality could be seen, for example, in El Salvador, which had the highest rate of homicides of any country in the world.

The crisis in Central America urgently required a stepped-up protection response and a regional approach to sharing responsibility for the growing crisis. UNHCR was working closely with the governments of the region and civil society partners to enhance screening capacity to identify people forced to flee violence and persecution in the Northern Triangle. For children, who required assistance to make decisions on asylum claims, this meant that best-interests determination procedures needed to be in place to ensure that they were not returned to persecution. Government efforts required additional human and financial resources, in addition to the rapid establishment of more adequate infrastructure so that asylum-seeking and refugee children were effectively protected.

UNHCR was working to build reception capacity, including enhanced assistance for asylum-seekers and additional spaces in civil society shelters for migrants so that they could also accommodate asylum-seekers. UNHCR was also encouraging governments to introduce legal avenues for refugees so that they no longer needed to rely on smugglers and traffickers and expose themselves to exploitation and abuse.

In response to questions, Mr. Edwards said that there was a frightening correlation between gang violence and mass displacement. There was a real need for strategic and joint efforts to enhance protection in the region. Tens and tens of thousands of people had been displaced across borders, without even considering internal displacement. Almost 40,000 people had crossed the U.S. border just between October and December 2015. There were still major protection gaps which needed to be addressed urgently.

UNHCR was working to build awareness of the problem and improve capacities for identification among migration officials. UNHCR was also trying to disseminate information in a way that was accessible to asylum-seekers, in particular children and teenagers, and helping to strengthen processes allowing child protection agencies to identify the best interests of the child, to bring them into conformity with international principles. In certain cases children and teenagers were being detained in detention centres, and resources were needed for the authorities to provide viable alternatives for those children. UNHCR was working in all the countries in question to try and strengthen the protection environment.

Lassa fever

Tarik Jasarevic, for the World Health Organization (WHO), emphasized the need for diagnostic tests for lassa fever. Some 80 per cent of those who would get lassa fever would not have symptoms, however, those who would get symptoms and were not treated with ribavirin on time risked death. That was the reason for the high fatality ratio observed since November 2015 in five West African countries: Nigeria, Benin, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Liberia. The lack of diagnostic tests was preventing people from getting the required treatment early. Lassa fever was a haemorrhagic illness endemic in West Africa. The overall case fatality rate was low, 1 per cent, but among those who were hospitalized it could rise up to 15 per cent or more, if people were not diagnosed. Since November 2015, there had been 300 cases in the above-mentioned five countries, and 167 deaths. WHO was accelerating work to find rapid diagnostics for lassa fever. The disease was transmitted mainly through contact with urine or faeces of rats. Some cases of human to human transmission had been documented.

Ebola

Mr. Jasarevic provided an update on Ebola. There had been nine confirmed cases in Guinea, and eight fatalities among them. There had been two more cases in Liberia, and an investigation was underway to determine whether those two flare-ups had been linked, as a person traveling from Guinea to Liberia had tested positive for Ebola. In Guinea, 1,200 people had been vaccinated and in Liberia, work was underway to monitor 90 contacts identified so far, with a plan to vaccinate them. WHO was organizing a meeting with Guinean and Liberian authorities to work on cross-border surveillance and cooperation.

Yellow fever

WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan was in Angola on 4-5 April to speak with health authorities, health care workers and the WHO team on ways to help Angola control the outbreak of yellow fever. Close to 6 million people had already been vaccinated in Luanda, but as the outbreak had spread to other parts of the country, people were in need of vaccination in other governorates. More vaccines should be shipped soon. It was important to expand production and avoid a shortage of vaccines.

Mediterranean arrivals

Leonard Doyle, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that 202 people had been returned on 4 April by Frontex from Greece to Turkey, including Afghans, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and also two Syrians, who had willingly accepted to go. That was presumably the beginning of the reciprocation scheme, under which for every Syrian sent back to Turkey, a Syrian refugee would be relocated within Europe. IOM was implementing the agreement of 22 July 2015. Some 74 Syrians had been resettled to Europe over the past two days by IOM, including 32 to Germany, 11 to Finland and 31 to the Netherlands. That was still far short of the target of 18,000 places.

Migrant flows in the Eastern Mediterranean seemed to be grinding to a halt, with only about 1,200 arrivals over the past four or five days. In the Central Mediterranean, concerns were on the rise regarding the safety of migrants crossing from the largely undocumented area of Libya, with a number of shipwrecks and deaths. Those migrants came mainly from West Africa and from the Horn of Africa.

In response to a question, Mr. Doyle said that the system in place following the EU-Turkey agreement could drive people to take far riskier journeys, although that had not been documented yet. Given that large parts of the Libyan coastline were controlled by ISIS, there was a question on whether Syrians fleeing ISIS would risk putting themselves further in harm’s way by fleeing there.

If the returns from Greece were to mean anything, they had to be accompanied by simultaneous application of the agreement on relocation and resettlement in Europe. If people saw that there was any hope of getting legally to a destination, they might not put themselves at the mercy of the smugglers. The key to the elaborate process at hand would the welcome extended to the Syrian refugees by the Europeans in terms of resettlement. Mr. Doyle also clarified that IOM was not involved in deportations, only in voluntary returns.

In response to another question, Mr. Edwards said that UNHCR had made recommendations on how the situation in Europe should be dealt with. Returns of people who did not qualify for refugee status were not being objected to by UNHCR, provided that proper procedures were followed and human rights norms were observed. Necessary safeguards had to be in place when it came to sealing with asylum seekers and with others in need of international protection, and work in those areas was still underway. Whether or not one was in need of international protection was not based on group characteristics such as nationality, but on the needs of the individual. Mr. Edwards also said that according to a report in The New York Times, ISIS could be deriving revenues from people smuggling from Libya to Italy, and while first-hand information was difficult to obtain, that issue was a major concern.

The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/unog050416