POINT DE PRESSE DU SERVICE DE L'INFORMATION (en anglais)
Ahmad Fawzi, Director, a.i., United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons of the World Health Organization and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Geneva activities
Committees
The Conference on Disarmament was holding the first plenary of the second part of its 2016 session on 17 May at 10 a.m. in the Council Chamber under the Presidency of Ambassador Tehmina Janjua of Pakistan.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child would meet at Palais Wilson to hold its seventy-second session from 17 May to 3 June, to review the promotion and protection of children's rights under the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols in Samoa, Slovakia, Nepal, United Kingdom, Pakistan, Gabon, Bulgaria and Luxembourg. A background release had been issued on 12 May. The Committee would start its consideration of the report of Samoa under the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 17 May at 3 p.m., to be concluded at 1 p.m. on 18 May. Over the course of the week, the Committee would also consider the reports of Slovakia and Nepal.
Press conferences and other announcements
Christian Lindmeier, for the World Health Organization (WHO), reminded the press that on 17 May, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan would brief the press at noon in Room III on brief on the upcoming 69th World Health Assembly which would take place from 23-28 May.
On 19 May, there would be a WHO press conference on the 2016 World Health Statistics in Press Room 1 at 10.30 a.m.
Mr. Fawzi also announced a press conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on 18 May at 10 a.m. in Room III, on the launch of the ILO flagship report, “World Employment and Social Outlook 2016” (WESO). The speakers would be Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General, and Raymond Torres, Director of the ILO Research Department.
Syria
Mr. Fawzi said that the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura was attending the ministerial meeting of the ISSG in Vienna today.
Pesticide residues
Christian Lindmeier, for the World Health Organization (WHO), spoke about the joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) held from 9 to 13 May. He introduced Dr. Angelika Tritscher, Coordinator, Food Safety, WHO, dealing with risk assessment and management.
Dr. Tritscher said that in 2015, the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer had classified three pesticides, diazinon, glyphosate and malathion, as “probably carcinogenic”. Since those pesticides were widely used in agriculture, and malathion was also recommended for vector control, this hazard classification led to the need for FAO and WHO to review available data and to see if there was a need to update the risk assessment - what the actual health risk for consumers was when those pesticides were found as residues in food. Due to the significant amount of new studies that had become available since the JMPR had last done a risk assessment on those compounds, FAO and WHO had convened another expert meeting in Geneva from 9 to 13 May, to perform a re-evaluation of the health risk of those three pesticides. The call for data for the meeting had been published in October 2015.
The experts had found that all three substances in the context of residues in food were unlikely to be genotoxic, and were not carcinogenic at dietary exposure levels, so there was no health risk for consumers. More details were available in the summary report. A detailed report would be available in a few weeks, and a detailed monograph would follow in a few months.
Another expert meeting was currently ongoing to review current WHO recommendations regarding the use of malathion for vector control in the light of the recent JMPR risk assessment. The Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues would review the JMPR assessment and examine the need to revise the maximum residue limits for those pesticides in different food crops.
In response to a question, Dr. Tritscher clarified that the three pesticides were not proteins, so they were not prone to trigger allergic reactions. There was no available human data on allergic reactions to those pesticides. Immunotoxicity had been evaluated through experimental studies. Two sets of information from human studies were available: reports on effects on workers in production plants, and epidemiologic studies of agricultural workers and their families.
Crimean Tatars
Rupert Colville, for the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), said that 18 May would mark the anniversary of the 1944 deportation during World War II of some 200,000 Tatars from Crimea. While many had eventually managed to return to their historic homeland, the situation of this vulnerable minority in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea remained a major concern.
Over the past two years, OHCHR had documented increasing persecution of Crimean Tatars. Members of the Mejlis, the representative body of the Crimean Tatar minority community, and their supporters had been intimidated, harassed and jailed, often on dubious charges. OHCHR was deeply concerned by the ban imposed on the Mejlis by the so-called ‘supreme court’ of Crimea on 26 April. OHCHR feared that the designation of the Mejlis as an extremist organization by the ‘court’ would leave Crimean Tatars even more exposed to human rights violations and collective punishment.
Since April 2014, Crimean Tatars had been subjected to arbitrary searches, seizure of books and arrests. Allegations of ill-treatment had largely gone unaddressed by the de facto authorities. On 1 April this year, 35 men, mostly Crimean Tatars, had been reportedly taken, without due process, to a police centre for countering extremism in Simferopol, where they had spent four hours being interrogated, photographed, fingerprinted and made to provide DNA samples, before they had been released. In 2015, the authorities had shut down a number of Crimean Tatar media outlets, and in the previous week had been reported to have also blocked Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Crimea news website. More details on the actions targeting Crimean Tatars were available in the briefing note.
OHCHR reminded the Russian Federation, which exercised de facto control over the territory of Crimea, that they had a duty to ensure that the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples were respected, and that they were not subjected to discrimination and harassment. OHCHR also urged the authorities to immediately lift the ban on the Mejlis, and to ensure that the freedoms of expression, information, peaceful assembly, religion or belief for all the people of Crimea were upheld.
In response to questions, Mr. Colville said that the situation of the Crimean Tatars had deteriorated since the annexation of the peninsula, and that this was particularly sad given the huge efforts that had gone into reintegrating them after more than 50 years in exile. It was sad to see, to a certain extent, history repeating itself, with the Crimean Tatars being placed in a very difficult position. The High Commissioner had had conversations with Russian officials on the topic of the Crimean Tatars, and had raised the issues, including that of the Mejlis. The periodic reports published by the OHCHR team in Ukraine were also putting a special focus on Crimea and on what was happening with the Tatars.
Mr. Colville also said that it was believed that between 240,000 and 250,000 Tatars had come back from Central Asia and had received Ukrainian citizenship. They had started coming back informally, with no paperwork, as early as the late 1980s, and the movement had intensified once Ukraine and Uzbekistan had become independent in the early 1990s. In response to another question, Mr. Colville said that between 1936 and 1952 more than 3 million people had been rounded up mostly along the Soviet Union’s western borders, based on their “foreign origin” or “culture”. Some 20 groups had been concerned by the deportation, but of those, there had been eight entire nations: the Volga Germans, the Kalmyks, and six Muslim groups: Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetians. The Crimean Tatars had been part of the last three groups allowed to return. He also said that OHCHR had been planning to make a statement ever since the Mejlis had been banned. Mr. Colville imagined that it was probably of some solace to Crimean Tatars that their story was not being forgotten, after the Eurovision song contest victory of a descendant of one of the deported Tatars.
Bangladesh
In response to a question, Mr. Colville said that OHCHR deeply regretted the execution of political leader Motiur Rahman Nizami in the previous week. OHCHR had raised his case both publicly and privately in recent months. The UN was deeply opposed to the death penalty.
International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia
In response to a question, Mr. Colville mentioned OHCHR’s global “Free and Equal” Campaign designed to ease discrimination against LGBTI people.