UN GENEVA PRESS BRIEFING

Rolando Gómez, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section at the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, chaired the hybrid briefing, which was attended by spokespersons and representatives from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the World Health Organization.

Update on the Human Rights Situation in Myanmar

Liz Throssell for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said this morning, the Office published its latest report on the human rights situation in Myanmar, detailing a range of serious violations that continued to underscore the deepening crisis and lack of rule of law throughout the country. Since the coup on 1 February 2021, at least 5,350 civilians had been killed, more than 3.3 million displaced and over half the population was living below the poverty line, primarily due to military violence, according to the report.

The report looked at the devastating impact of the violence, destruction and deprivation on people’s mental health, as well as the regression in economic and social rights, which was precipitating further economic decline. At the same time young people, who provided the key to Myanmar’s future, were fleeing abroad to escape being forced to serve in or fight for the military.

The report also documented the vast scope of detentions undertaken by the military. Nearly 27,400 individuals had been arrested since the coup, with arrests on the rise since the military’s implementation of mandatory conscription in February 2024. Credible sources indicated that at least 1,853 people had died in custody, including 88 children and 125 women. Many of these individuals had been verified as dying after being subjected to abusive interrogation, other ill-treatment in detention or denial of access to adequate healthcare.

All those responsible for gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law needed to be held accountable. The lack of any form of accountability for perpetrators was an enabler for the repetition of violations, abuses and crimes. It was essential that such behaviour be clearly identified and deterred. Accountability for such violations needed to apply to all perpetrators.

The enormity of challenges Myanmar was facing and would face in the years ahead to ensure respect for the rule of law and functional justice institutions was daunting.

Considering these findings, High Commissioner Volker Türk had renewed his recommendation, among others, to the United Nations Security Council to refer the full scope of the current situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court. He reiterated his calls for an end to the violence and for the immediate and unconditional release of all those arbitrarily detained. Equally important for the future of Myanmar and its people were the grassroots efforts of civil society and community-based organizations to provide essential services, including mental health care. These also needed to be specifically supported.

To read the full report, please click here.

James Rodehaver, Head of the Myanmar Team, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said the report showed the extent to which Myanmar was plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss and it tried to encapsulate the human rights developments over the last 15 months. This was a comprehensive report that was requested by the Human Rights Council. The last time OHCHR released a report of this nature was in March 2023. In that intervening period, many things have happened. 

There was a real deterioration due to violence and armed conflict in the country and massive regressions in human rights that had been provoked by a vacuum of rule of law. The report highlighted in detail how the Myanmar military had created a crisis by instrumentalising the legal system, criminalising nearly all forms of dissent against its attempts to rule the country. It also had utilised the law enforcement and justice systems to conduct mass arrest campaigns, which continued to happen throughout the country. The report verified the arrests of many individuals for expressing dissent against the military. Those individuals were placed in pretrial detention for lengthy periods in horrific conditions.

Torture and ill-treatment in military custody were pervasive. Detainees interviewed by the Office described methods such as being suspended from the ceiling without food or water; being forced to kneel or crawl on hard or sharp objects; use of snakes, insects and other wild animals to provoke fear; beatings with iron poles, bamboo sticks, batons, rifle butts, leather strips, electric wires and motorcycle chains; asphyxiation, mock executions; electrocution and burning with tasers, lighters, cigarettes, and boiling water; spraying of methylated substances on open wounds; cutting of body parts and pulling of fingernails. Truly some of the most depraved behaviour was utilised as methods of torture in these detention centres. There were also disturbing reports of sexual violence against both male and female detainees. These were incredibly difficult to confirm, but the Office had received so many vivid reports of these violations that it could not ignore them. 

The heavy-handed use of justice institutions showed that the military were not bound by the rule of law whatsoever. The report encapsulated the persistent regression of human rights in almost every area in the full spectrum of rights.

In response to questions, Mr. Rodehaver said the report would be delivered at the Human Rights Council in an interactive dialogue on 23 September and had been published online at 9 a.m. today.

There was no government in Myanmar. There was a military-run governmental apparatus that was not recognised by the United Nations and the majority of member States. The apparatus was in control of less than 40 per cent of the country and was increasingly losing ground to armed groups in various territories. It had lost any credibility from the people of Myanmar. OHCHR had frequently shared its reports with the military, but they had decried and dismissed any criticisms of their human rights record.

After the crisis, public services had collapsed. Many teachers, doctors, lawyers and trade unionists had stopped working, and many schools had stopped operating. Public services were primarily being provided by civil society organizations in many territories. Over 18.6 million people were assessed to be in humanitarian need. Most people who were accessible for humanitarian aid workers were not in conflict areas. The military had been very effective in denying humanitarians access to conflict areas. Many internally displaced persons were receiving very little food assistance. Humanitarians needed travel authorisations, customs clearances and bank transfers to pay for the assistance, and the military had restricted such efforts. There were cases of humanitarian goods being burned, sometimes by the military.

There were serious health problems manifesting across Rakhine State, especially among the Rohingya, who were often the targets of fighting. There were local community efforts to provide mental health services, which were highly needed due to the high level of trauma. 

The report addressed how communications and social media had been restricted. There had been attempts to ban VPNs and large areas of the country had been blacked out from all communications by the military, which had cut off the internet and phone lines. The military was using drones to conduct large-scale attacks, leading to civilian casualties at a level not seen before. However, it was difficult to verify such attacks due to communications disruptions. The military was now playing on the fears and desires of different ethnic communities, forcing or enticing ethnic groups to fight against each other.

Sexual violence was being used in detention as a form of torture or coercion and was also being used on the ground by troops, including in recent attacks in Rakhine State. It was difficult to interview victims in a way that did no harm, particularly when aid workers were not on the ground.

Each armed group was providing an ad-hoc security service. There were many soldiers who surrendered in combat, and the OHCHR did not know how they were being treated in detention. Many civilians were very scared and did not want to talk about the armed groups who had liberated them from the military.

Proposed Constitutional Reform in Mexico

In response to a question on the topic, Liz Throssell for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that OHCHR had been closely following judicial reforms in Mexico and had expressed concerns about aspects that could impact judicial independence. The OHCHR Office in Mexico had been engaging extensively on the issue, sending letters and issuing public statements. In August, the head of the Office addressed a meeting with the Supreme Court on judicial independence. An independent judiciary was key to defending the Constitution, guaranteeing human rights, protecting minorities and safeguarding the separation and balance of powers, which was fundamental to the rule of law. The UN human rights office remained committed to providing technical assistance to strengthen the protection of human rights and judicia independence in Mexico.

Political Prisoners in Cuba

In response to a question on the topic, Liz Throssell for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said OHCHR was aware of people who were detained in Cuba who were classified as political prisoners. This issue was not in the news. The Office was reminding the authorities of the need to abide by international standards regarding the right to freedom of expression, association and assembly, as well as media freedom.

Launch of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction

Kamal Kishore, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), said that globally, disasters were increasing in frequency and intensity, related to the effects of climate change and geophysical hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters. The impact of these disasters was also being driven by increasing exposure and increasing vulnerability, meaning more people living in the way of natural hazards who were vulnerable. 

There were no “natural” disasters. Typhoons, cyclones and earthquakes were inevitable, but they should not need to lead to loss of life or livelihoods at a large scale. If we built resilience into the development systems, we could reduce the losses by an order of magnitude. This had been accomplished for a number of hazards in many parts of the world. In South Asia, Bangladesh and India, the losses that occurred from cyclones, particularly in terms of mortality, were 98 per cent less than what they were 15 or 20 years ago. The losses from cyclones in the Caribbean were enormous, but mortality was in single digits in most countries. That would not have been the situation if the same event had occurred 20 years ago.

If we were to get resilience building efforts right, make the right kind of development choices and invest in resilience, then it would be entirely possible to greatly reduce losses, both in terms of loss of lives as well as loss of livelihoods. 

Further amplifying this narrative, the report that UNDRR would launch in Geneva tomorrow, which was called the “Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction Special Edition 2024”, looked at ten major events occurring during the last ten years and did a forensic analysis of what really happened. It examined why losses were so high and the measures taken to reduce losses, considering the measures that worked in reducing losses and the measures that could be further improved or modified. 

Each disaster was too precious to waste. We needed to draw lessons from every disaster and do a sober, deep technical analysis of the underlying factors. This included analysis of not only the approximate causes and the intensity, but also of issues such as why houses were destroyed, looking at factors such as construction, land use planning and earthquake-resistant building codes, and why such standards may not have been implemented, considering issues such as lack of capacity. We needed to commit ourselves to building back better and to a resilient recovery, which could not happen if you did not understand in the first place why the losses were so high. 

UNDRR had produced global assessment reports every three years since 2009, which provided state-of-the-art knowledge on disaster risk reduction as well as analytics that governments across the world could use for informing policy making so that they could build resilience to disasters. This special edition of the report would contribute to the broader dialogue at the Summit of the Future, a key theme of which was building resilience for the future and addressing risks in a comprehensive way.

Floods in Nigeria

Arjun Jain, Representative in Nigeria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said there was a crisis within a crisis in Nigeria. This was a crisis that was also affecting Chad, Niger and many other countries in West Africa. 

In Nigeria, almost half the country was affected by massive flooding. Maiduguri, a large city in the northeast of Nigeria, was currently the epicentre of the crisis. A dam recently broke in the city, affecting a million people across the country and displacing 400,000 people. These were communities that had been impacted by ten years of conflict. Armed militia groups had displaced hundreds of thousands of families in that region for the past decade. More recently, there was a severe malnutrition crisis that resulted in the deaths of around 100 children an hour. There was a massive depreciation of the Naira resulting in a crisis within a crisis, and now there were the floods. This was an extremely fragile community.

UNHCR teams that were affected by the floods, with some team members having lost their houses, had been on the ground assisting communities, which had been packed in crowded schools and camps for internally displaced persons that were closed as people were getting back on their feet. Right now, there was an urgent need for significant assistance and the crisis would continue as people went back to their homes, which had been destroyed. The reconstruction effort would also be rather difficult. 

This crisis had often been neglected, given that there had been ten years of violence. But UNHCR was on the ground providing food and other forms of assistance to affected communities in northeast Nigeria and other parts of the country, as the flood waters moved down south to other states.

Red Cross Responds to Floods in Central Europe

Andreas von Weissenberg, Head of Health, Disasters, Climate and Crises for the European Region, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said dramatic events were unfolding in central Europe and the situation was not over yet. Fresh evacuation orders had gone out this morning in Austria, Czechia and Poland and the peak would come in the coming days. Water levels in the Danube in Budapest this morning were very high and were projected to reach their highest levels in 48 hours. 

Across particularly Poland, Czechia and Austria, there had been loss of life, power outages, transport disruptions and damage to infrastructure. Thousands of people had been evacuated and hundreds of thousands were affected by all the impact of these floods. 

Since this weather system started forming last week, national Red Cross societies had been standing up and responding. Thousands of volunteers were involved just in Austria. The Austrian Red Cross had 2,500 staff and volunteers helping to build flood protection, helping in evacuations, particularly where extra assistance was needed. Austrian Red Cross was helping elderly people with mobility issues in the evacuations and in evacuation centres, as well and distributing essential items and supporting the authorities in evacuations and search and rescue. 

The Red Cross teams in these countries were trying to look after people's emotional and mental health. These were extremely disruptive events for those affected. It was critical to help people to cope after they had been evacuated in a rush or had lost their homes and did not know when they can go back or what they can go back to. This kind of support was something that the authorities could not necessarily provide at scale in situations like this, so was a big role for the Red Cross. 

In the coming weeks, attribution studies would give us a scientific view on how much of climate change could be attributed to these events. But weather events like this had been seen increasingly over the past years, with floods in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium in 2021 and massive floods in Slovenia a year ago. In the past days, there were some places in Austria that had had 400 millimetres of rain. These were extreme numbers. Europe had for decades been warming at a much higher rate than the rest of the world. Warm air held more moisture and what went up came down in the form of these extreme rain events. There would be more such events going forward. These had been branded as historic floods, but climate change had a way of moving the goal posts. Soon, we would be talking about these events as frequent or even annual. 

Significant steps were being taken by the IFRC and by authorities in understanding and acknowledging the need to adapt. The window on mitigation was essentially closed; the coming decades would bring more and more extreme events. But funding for adaptation globally was still lagging. We were not meeting the targets. Most climate funding went to mitigation. Much more needed to be done. 

The Red Cross was looking at scaling up adaptation locally, where day-to-day preparedness work and oftentimes the first response was happening. One of the key roles for the Red Cross, which had a presence in all communities through volunteers, was early warning and early action. Everyone had the right to get information in a timely way and be equipped with the knowledge that they needed to be safe or at least safer when these types of events unfolded.

International Snakebite Awareness Day

David Williams, Scientist and Expert on Snakes and Snakebites, World Health Organization (WHO), said Thursday, 19 September was International Snakebite Awareness Day and WHO was focusing this year on disability caused by snakebites, one of the least talked-about aspects of snakebites. For every person who died from a snakebite—there were deaths every four to six minutes—there were around about 27 people an hour who were left permanently disabled as a result of having been bitten by a venomous snake in some part of the world. 

The physical impacts that bites had ranged from physical and psychological scarring right through to amputation and blindness, but bites also financial impacts. They were driving people further into poverty, affecting not only the victim but also the victim’s family, not just through the high cost of treatment but also through the ongoing loss of income that was often incurred, particularly if the family bread winner was the victim. 

WHO added snake bite envenoming to the list of neglected tropical diseases in 2017 and the World Health Assembly passed a resolution in 2018 calling on both WHO and countries to do more to address this problem. On International Snake Bite Awareness Day, WHO was highlighting that around about 240,000 people a year were left with disabilities as a result of snake bites. More than a third of them were children. Snakes did not discriminate. Pregnant women who were affected by snake bites could potentially lose their child in utero or be no longer able to care for their child if they did end up giving birth.

WHO’s goal was to try to reduce the burden of snake bite by 50 per cent before 2030, and it was working very closely with a wide community of experts around the world to try and achieve better results. Already in the Southeast Asian region, a regional action plan had been put in place, and the African region was now working on a plan of its own. India, where 58,000 people a year die of snake bite, had just launched its own national action plan. Given that India bore the biggest burden of all countries from snake bites, this was a major step forward.

Nigeria was currently going through a critical shortage of snake antivenom due to an influx of additional cases of snake bite that had been brought about by the flooding. This was a problem that occurred in many areas of the world where these sorts of disasters occurred on a regular basis. The same thing happened in the last major flooding events in Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, South Sudan and various other countries around the world.

There was a huge demand for effective treatment. Unfortunately, some regions of the world just simply did not have enough safe and effective treatments available to them. In particular in Sub-Saharan Africa, only around 2.5 per cent of the treatments that were needed were available. WHO was working with affected countries and with manufacturers to try and improve the situation.

In response to questions, Dr. Williams said snake venoms were a mixture of different types of toxins, some of which dissolved muscle and sinew. Some people needed to have limbs amputated after being bitten, and regeneration of tissue resulted in permanent scarring. Women in Cambodia who were bitten in rubber plantations became unable to go into society due to the stigma attached to the scarring they experienced.

Most facilities in Nigeria had run out of antivenom. Without antivenom, fatality rates for snakebites went up to around 40 per cent. It was likely that facilities would remain without treatments for a period of time. The Nigerian Government was taking urgent steps to procure treatment, but the situation was concerning.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed work on snakebites. WHO was currently collecting data on snakebites for 2023. The reporting of deaths and disabilities caused by snakebites was often insufficient; WHO was encouraging States to report such data.

Following India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were also bearing sizable burdens due to high levels of snake bites. Around 40,000 deaths occurred in Pakistan each year. In Bangladesh, around 60 per cent of incidents were not reported to authorities as persons who were bitten had not received health care. In India, around 50 per cent of victims needed to sell their land or property or take their children out of school to pay for treatment.

UNHCR Response to Global Disinformation Targeting Asylum Seekers and Refugees

In response to a question, William Spindler for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that UNHCR was increasingly concerned about the increasing prevalence of misinformation and disinformation, particularly on social media but on all channels, targeting refugees and asylum seekers. This was a worldwide problem that stigmatised some of the most vulnerable people, people who were fleeing persecution and conflict and who needed protection. UNHCR did not comment on electoral processes.

Rolando Gómez, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section at the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, said the United Nations encouraged electoral processes to be free and fair. Combatting disinformation and upholding information integrity was a priority of the Secretary-General and this was going to be one of the many issues that would be discussed in the upcoming Summit of the Future. This was a scourge which needed to be addressed vehemently.

Announcements

Rolando Gómez, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section at the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, said the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was concluding this morning its review of the report of Albania. It would begin this afternoon the review of the report of Cyprus.

The Human Rights Council was into its second week of its fifty-seventh session. There were dialogues being held today with the Independent Expert on the promotion of democratic and equitable international order, George Katrougalos, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

On Wednesday, 18 September at 10:30 a.m., the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) would hold a hybrid press conference to launch its annual “United in Science” report. Speaking would be Celeste Saulo, WMO Secretary-General and Lauren Stuart, scientific coordinator.

On Thursday, 19 September at 1 p.m., the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child would hold a hybrid press to present findings on Argentina, Armenia, Israel, Mexico and Turkmenistan. Speakers were Ann Skelton, Chair of the Committee and Committee Members.

On Thursday, 19 September at 3 p.m., Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, would hold a hybrid press conference presenting her monitoring and impact assessment report on unilateral coercive measures.

UNIS would continue to provide information throughout the week to journalists on topics that would be discussed at the Summit of the Future in New York.

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