REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by the spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Organization for Migration, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, and the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Geneva Activities

The Secretary-General had met last Thursday, 1 October, with H.E. Mr. Sergey V. Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The Secretary-General and the Foreign Minister discussed the latest developments in Syria, including the campaign against ISIL and other terrorist groups, agreeing that any air strikes should be carried out with strict observance of international humanitarian and international human rights law. The full text of the readout is available here.

Mr. Fawzi contacted Staffan de Mistura, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Syria, to convey concerns expressed by the Press Corps. Mr. De Mistura would arrive in Geneva tomorrow, 7 October, when the possibility of a meeting with the press in Geneva would be discussed further.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was now concluding the consideration of a report by Greece, the last country scheduled for this session, which ends on Friday 9 October.

The International Labour Organization will launch its Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015 report on 8 October (under embargo until THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER at 8 p.m. GMT - 10 p.m. Geneva time). A press briefing by Azita Berar-Awad, Director of the ILO’s Employment Department, would be held on Thursday, 8 October at 11 a.m. in Press Room 1 at the Palais des Nations.

The International Labour Organization’s media advisory can be accessed here.

The Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Michael Møller had briefed the media yesterday, 5 October, at the Club Suisse de la Presse on the UNOG Open Day and the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. The press conference had been attended by Ambassador Alexandre Fasel, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations and to other international organizations in Geneva, Mr. François Longchamp, President of the State Council (Conseil d'Etat), Canton and Geneva Republic, Ms. Esther Alder, Mayor of Geneva, and Mr. Ivan Pictet, President of Fondation pour Genève.

The full text of the press release is available here.

Mr. Fawzi also announced that the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson, would be arriving in Geneva next week to attend the Global Consultations on the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. Mr. Eliasson was currently in Saudi Arabia where he was holding talks with the Royal family and senior members of the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This would be followed by the talks with senior members of the Government of the United Arab Emirates in Dubai, and on 11 October the Deputy United Nations Secretary-General was expected in Tehran to attend the events marking the 70^th anniversary of the United Nations and to meet with senior officials of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On 13 October, Mr. Eliasson would represent the United Nations Secretary-General at the Global Forum on Migration in Istanbul, Turkey, and meet senior Turkish leaders. Mr. Fawzi was trying to organize a joint press conference with the Deputy United Nations Secretary-General and the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator on Thursday, 15 October. Mr. Eliasson would be in Geneva from 14 to 16 October.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights was currently in Mexico, where he was meeting the President and other members of the Government, the President of National Commission for Human Rights, representatives of civil society organizations, and victims of human rights violations.

Situation in Kunduz, Afghanistan

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that many had condemned the lethal bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz, in North East Afghanistan, including the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, in a statement issued on 3 October.

Concerning the humanitarian situation in Kunduz, there was now no functioning trauma care hospital in the city after this bombing. The MSF hospital had been the only facility of its kind in the entire North Eastern region, serving some 300,000 people in Kunduz alone. The fighting between armed groups and government forces in Kunduz was ongoing, the airport was closed to civilian aircrafts and there was no road access into the city because of road side bombs, ambushes and road blocks. There were presently no humanitarian agencies left in Kunduz city. An estimated 8,500 families were displaced in the North East as a result of the fighting. Identifying and responding to the needs of these internally displaced people was now a high priority. The humanitarian needs in Kunduz were largely unquantified due to lack of access. Agencies did have available stock in the region, and a small-scale response was being sporadically arranged where access allowed.

Responding to questions by journalists, Mr. Laerke said that the situation on the ground in terms of continued fighting was the factor that hindered the access and was the main obstacle to obtaining a proper assessment of what was going on inside Kunduz. It was known that those who fled were scattered outside of the city, and as yet there was no full, comprehensive picture of the situation. Anecdotal evidence points to one or few MSF staff still in the hospital, trying to provide health services to the population, but this was not confirmed. The big picture was that the international aid agencies had been forced out of the city for the time being, so there was essentially no proper health and trauma care for those left in the city.

A reporter remarked that MSF was doing a job that was essentially under the United Nations umbrella and mandate, and they were left behind; when they were bombed, there wasn’t really any United Nations help and support for their call for an independent investigation. The United Nations Secretary-General hadn’t said as much as he would were it a United Nations member that had been bombed.

Mr. Laerke said that the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs had strongly condemned the attack, and the United Nations requested an independent and impartial investigation into the air strikes. Mr. Fawzi noted that it was the Secretary-General himself who had called over the weekend for a “thorough and impartial investigation into the attack in order to ensure accountability.” MSF has been operating the only hospital in Kunduz under extremely difficult conditions and the United Nations always valued their work and the partnership with NGOs, particularly in conflict and post-conflict situations. The Secretary-General has commended the courageous and dedicated staff of this organization and he had extended his deepest sympathies to the families of those killed and injured in the attack. There was also a statement by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Non-governmental organizations were included in emergency security procedures that covered the United Nations staff in the region, which meant that there was care for non-UN workers, humanitarian workers, in areas of conflict.

On questions related to an independent investigation and the possible involvement of the United States military in the investigation, Mr. Fawzi said that differentiating between United Nations staff and non-United Nations staff in the treatment of the issue was a false premise. It was no accurate to say that, had it been United Nations staff instead of MSF, the United Nations Secretary-General would call for a United Nations’ investigation, or for an independent investigation. An impartial investigation carried more weight in the eyes of outsiders who were viewing the work of the United Nations in a critical and constructive manner.

Mr. Laerke stressed that intentional attacks against health care and humanitarian personnel, facilities and vehicles constituted serious violations of international humanitarian law, and that parties to the conflict were clearly duty bearers. An impartial investigation called for the by United Nations Secretary-General must be concluded before a responsibility was squarely put on anyone. A number of agencies had supplies available in the area, but did not have access to Kunduz to provide humanitarian aid. Those included the United Nations World Food Programme, United Nations Population Fund and a number of clusters.

In response to the question on who should conduct the independent investigation and who should start the process, Mr. Fawzi said that the United Nations Secretary-General had called for an impartial investigation and it remained to be seen who would be a part of it. It was not possible to predict now which countries or institutions the Secretary-General would call upon to conduct the investigation. The mechanics of putting it together varied from one situation to other, it did not depend on any country authorizing it, and it was always urgent to investigate alleged war crimes.

Children in armed conflicts

Christophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Programme (UNICEF), said that 50 years ago, in 1965, UNICEF had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The United Nations Children Fund's Executive Director at the time, Henry Labouisse, then declared that “the welfare of today’s children is inseparably linked with the peace of tomorrow’s world”. Today, in w world of growing turmoil, his words still ring true. For a child born in 2015 has a far greater chance to survive and fulfil her potential than a child born in 1965, the welfare of too many children today is jeopardized by conflicts and crisis, deprivation and disadvantage. Mr. Boulierac recalled that 230 million children, or one in ten, were living in countries and areas affected by armed conflict; among those 15 million were directly affected by violence, and 59 million children still did not receive primary education.

UNICEF calls for a joint vaccination operational plan in the Sudan

In the Sudan, UNICEF welcomed the propositions by both the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Revolutionary Force for the cessation of hostilities, hoping that this would be translated in rapid access and quick response to children in need of humanitarian aid. This came in the wake of consistent humanitarian calls strongly urging all parties to conflict in Sudan to stop the fighting, guarantee at all times the safety of all children and unimpeded humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains, localities in the Blue Nile States and Jabel Mara. These areas have been inaccessible for four years and the full scale and magnitude of humanitarian needs were only partially known and extremely worrying.

An estimated 165,000 children under the age of five have had no access to vaccination in the Nuba Mountains and some localities in the Blue Nile State alone. Sudan’s children continued to be beleaguered by disease outbreaks such as measles, dengue fever and diarrhoea. UNICEF urged all parties to the conflict to commit to the joint vaccination operational plan which has been in place over the last three years.

Children in Sudan continued to bear the greatest burden as the double victims of conflict and chronic under development. Since January 2015, there were a measles outbreaks in 32 localities in all the 18 states of the country, with 14 states at epidemic level. By August 2015, the confirmed number of measles cases was 3168, over four times higher than the usual caseload in Sudan of 600 cases. Out of the 3,168 confirmed cases, 72 per cent were children less under the age of 15. Some two million children under the age of five were acutely malnourished annually; 550.000 children were severely acutely malnourished. In all 18 states of the Sudan, malnutrition rates were over the emergency threshold of 15 per cent. Mr. Boulierac also said that 3.1 million children in the Sudan were out of school.

UNICEF Sudan humanitarian appeal for 2015 was 72 per cent unfunded. Total funding requirements in 2015 were nearly $ 117 million, of which almost $ 33 million had been received.

Answering the questions, Mr. Boulierac said that United Nations Children Fund had started vaccination campaign already in January 2015, when the first outbreaks had been reported; unfortunately access was not guaranteed to the three areas of the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile and the Jabel Mara of Northern Darfur, where children had not been vaccinated. Currently, United Nations Children Fund was fully operational and hoped that the call for the cessation of hostilities would quickly translate into vaccination of the 165,000 children under the age of five in those areas.

Yemen Appeal, Mediterranean arrivals and fatalities, the Central African Republic

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that the IOM and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) were working on a regional donor plan for approximately US $150 million for the rest of the year and 2016 to assist refugees and migrants fleeing Yemen. IOM estimated that 103,000 people had already fled Yemen this year, and that more than 200,000 would flee by the end of 2016. Those were not the persons displaced in the conflict zones, but those identified as in need of assistance, principally foreign nationals who were scattered across the Yemeni area. The press release is available here.

As of this week, the total number of arrivals in the Mediterranean had reached 557,889 people which had been more than the double of the last year’s total for the region. This year, 134 fatalities had been reported in Turkish waters. The press release on latest migrant arrivals, deaths in the Mediterranean could be read here.

Referring to the attack on IOM’s office in Bangui, Central African Republic, on the night of 27 September, in which the office had been extensively ransacked, seriously reducing IOM’s operational capacity, Mr. Millman stated that indeed there were no offensive arms, but only the protective vests and helmets that were in standard use among international aid agencies. Approximately 35 such security kits were missing, presumably taken by the looters. Further information in IOM’s press release.

Responding to questions, Mr. Millman said that an enormous part of the Libyan route, which had been used by Syrian refugees last year, had now dried up and the traffic had moved to routes through Turkey. Libyan coastal guards were more active in patrolling the coast and the traffic on this route was by no means over. Smuggling people was a typical criminal activity, in which criminals could and could not talk to each other; all those who were opportunistic could set up a business quite quickly, as had been seen in Gaza last year or in Turkey. If this was an organized activity, there would have been more violence between smugglers, and this was not obvious in the Mediterranean.

Global Consultation for the World Humanitarian Summit 2016

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that the Global Consultation would take place from 14 to 16 October in the International Conference Centre in Geneva (CICG). It would complete the consultative process leading to the World Humanitarian Summit, called for by the United Nations Secretary-General, and hosted by Turkey on 23-24 May 2016. The Global Consultation in Geneva was expected to gather some 900 participants from a wide range of stakeholders in humanitarian action, including affected people themselves. The event would be attended by Jan Eliasson, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Didier Burkhalter, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation, Stephen O’Brien, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and Ambassador Manuel Bessler, Head of Swiss Humanitarian Aid, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland.

The full text of the media advisory can be accessed here.

World Mental Health Day, 10 October

Dr Michelle Funk, Coordinator for Mental Health Policy and Service Development, World Health Organization (WHO) reminded of the seriousness of mental health problems. Globally, mental health disorders accounted for 13 per cent of a total burden of disease, which in some countries, people with serious mental health conditions were dying 10 to 20 years earlier than the general population. Countries had not provided an adequate response and there was a fundamental failure to provide quality services, those that people needed and those that provided dignity and human rights which were essential to mental health and recovery.

Additional information on World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme "Dignity in mental health" is available here.

Fadela Chaib, for the World Health Organization, said that the International Agency for Research on Cancer was meeting in Lyon, France, to review the literature on red and processed meat. Two weeks upon the completion of the report, it would be published in Lancet Oncology, and at this occasion a press release on the subject would be published.