REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE
Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which provided information on the Secretary-General's visit to London, new statements by the Secretary-General, the Deputy-Secretary-General's visit to UN peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, Geneva activities, International Women's Day, human rights and other issues. Spokespersons for or Representatives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the International Labour Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the Economic Commission for Europe, the World Food Programme, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the International Organization for Migration participated in the briefing.
Secretary-General in London
Mrs. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Secretary-General was in London today where he would address the London Meeting on Supporting the Palestinian Authority, hosted by United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair. Copies of the Secretary-General's embargoed statement to the meeting were available in the press room. The statement was embargoed until 11 a.m. Geneva time today.
This afternoon, the Secretary-General would participate in a ministerial-level meeting of the Middle East "Quartet", which also included United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana. Mr. Annan was expected to have a number of bilateral meetings in the margins of the all-day conference. He would return to New York on Wednesday morning.
New Statements by the Secretary-General
Mrs. Ponomareva-Piquier said that available in the press room were copies of the statement of the Secretary-General on his nomination of Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand to head the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development for a term of four years beginning on 1 September 2005. This appointment had to be confirmed by the General Assembly. Dr. Supachai currently headed the World Trade Organization.
Also available in the press room were copies of the Secretary-General's statement in which he condemned in the strongest possible terms the horrendous suicide car bombing that took place yesterday in Hillah in Iraq, in which over 110 civilians, police and National Guard volunteers were reportedly killed and at least 130 injured.
The Secretary-General had yesterday addressed the opening at Headquarters of the session of the Commission on the Status of Women marking Beijing Plus Ten. He said that 10 years after the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, women were not only more aware of their rights, they were more able to exercise them. Copies of his remarks to the meeting were available in the press room.
Deputy-Secretary-General Starts Visit to UN Peacekeeping Missions
Mrs. Ponomareva-Piquier said that Louise Frechette, the Deputy-Secretary-General, had arrived in Monrovia yesterday on the first leg of her visit to UN peacekeeping missions which was aimed to drive home with the peacekeeping missions the Secretary-General's zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse. In the course of the week, she would also visit peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire.
Geneva Activities
Mrs. Ponomareva-Piquier said that King Juan Carlos 1 and Queen Sofia of Spain would be undertaking an official visit to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations based in Geneva from 6 to 8 March. There would be more details on the visit available at the Friday briefing on 4 March.
The next plenary of the Conference on Disarmament would take place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 3 March. So far, Austria and Canada were on the speakers list.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was continuing its session at the Palais Wilson. This morning, the Committee would be concluding its thematic discussion on the prevention of genocide. This afternoon, it would be taking up a periodic report of Australia. The Committee would also be considering reports from Ireland and Bahrain this week.
Mrs. Ponomareva-Piquier said that as part of the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations, the Staff Coordinating Council had yesterday held a ceremony in the Assembly Hall to honour more than 300 staff members who had faithfully served the Organization during the past 25 or 30 years. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, had participated in the ceremony. Mrs. Charlotte Lamuniere, 103 years, the doyen of the former UNOG staffers, who had started her career with the League of Nations, and then continued with the United Nations, had received a medal of honour and had been given a standing ovation.
An exhibition by Romanian painter Monica Damian-Vaupré was being held at the Palais des Nations from 1 to 10 March under the auspices of Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze and the Permanent Representative of Romania to UNOG, Doru Romulus Costea. The Director-General and the Permanent Representative of Romania would open the exhibition at 6:30 p.m. today and journalists were cordially invited to attend. A note to correspondents would be available later in the day.
In conclusion, Mrs. Ponomareva-Piquier said that United Nations Volunteers were celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Online Volunteering service of UNV. Available at the back of the room was a press release as well as a message from UNV's Executive Coordinator Ad de Raad in which he said that since it started in 2000, some 30,000 people had joined the Online Volunteering service, with more than half of them having engaged in an assignment.
International Women's Day
Ingeborg Breines of the UNESCO Liaison Office in Geneva said that to mark International Women's Day on 8 March, UNESCO's Director-General Koichiro Matsuura was launching for the fourth time the global initiative "Women Make the News" in which UNESCO appealed to all media producing daily news to hand over editorial responsibility to women to cast the news on that day. UNESCO hoped, among other things, that this initiative would help societies do away with negative perceptions and attitudes that undermined the role of women in leadership in general, and in the media in particular. Available was a press release on this subject.
Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Organization said that ILO would be commemorating International Women's Day with an international film festival which would be held from 4 to 10 March at the Cac Voltaire cinema in Geneva. Available was a pamphlet on the films that would be shown. A round table would also be held on 8 March.
Human Rights
José Luis Díaz, Spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said a press release on the visit of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on torture to Georgia (19 to 25 February 2005) was available. The Special Rapporteur had visited the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia during the mission.
Mr. Díaz said that, also in relation to the upcoming Commission on Human Rights, the International Film Festival on Human Rights would take place from 11 to 19 March. The organizers would be holding a press conference at the Swiss Press Club on 2 March at 11 a.m. This was the third year that the Festival was being held, and it ran during the first week of the Commission. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour would participate in the opening of the Festival on 11 March.
Mr. Díaz said that he would be sending journalists a note later today to show them how to receive in their Internet browsers links to reports to the Commission as those documents were issued.
Other
Ingeborg Breines of the UNESCO Liaison Office in Geneva said that UNESCO Director-General would today be launching the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development at UN Headquarters in New York. There would be a press conference at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 2 March at the Swiss Press Club. A press release on this subject was also available.
Brigitte Leoni of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction recalled that at the Kobe Conference, ISDR had been given the mandate to coordinate all United Nations initiatives concerning the global tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean. ISDR was working on this project in coordination with UNESCO, which was in charge of the technical installation of the system. There would be a meeting of technical experts of Member States of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and especially those from the Indian Ocean region, from 3 to 8 March to produce a draft work plan and timetable for the establishment of the Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System for the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia region.
Jean Michel Jakobowicz of the Economic Commission for Europe said that available was a press release on the UNECE/FAO Forest Certification Update for the UNECE Region 2003 which showed that certification of forestland and certified forest products markets continued to grow in the UNECE region in 2003. Also available was a press release on the UNECE spring seminar which was held last week and which had identified challenges and opportunities for resource-rich transition economies.
Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said that in Afghanistan, the battle continued to try to respond to the needs of vulnerable persons dealing with this harsh winter which had already killed more than 500 persons, mostly women and children. WFP had only been able to help 50,000 persons so far. Some 600 persons were trying to help clear the roads which were blocked by snow.
In Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ms. Berthiaume said that WFP's food distribution had had to be suspended in three places because of the insecurity, which among other things had resulted in the killing of nine peacekeeping troops. That meant that 10,300 families who were depending on WFP's feeding programme were now cut off. The good news was that WFP had almost finished the distribution of the February rations, except for 600 families, and once the security situation permitted, WFP would resume its distribution.
Rupert Colville of the High Commissioner for Refugees said that UNHCR was today releasing the annual statistics on asylum seekers arriving in industrialized countries. Copies of a press release were available, as well as copies of the report. Some of the highlights included that in 2004, the number of asylum seekers fell sharply for the third year in a row, reaching its lowest level for 16 years across all the industrialized countries for which comparable historical statistics were available. The largest group of asylum seekers was from the Russian Federation, the majority of them Chechens. The next largest groups were from Serbia and Montenegro, China, Turkey and India.
In Malaysia, Mr. Colville said that as a twice-postponed crackdown in Malaysia against illegal migrants got underway today shortly after midnight, a mixed picture of the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers was emerging. UNHCR had been concerned that refugees and people of concern to it could get caught up in the crackdown. UNHCR was encouraged by early reports showing that Malaysian law enforcers had released people carrying UNHCR documents. However, some 29 persons with documentation had been arrested by immigration authorities and had been sent to immigration detention centres and UNHCR had quickly responded by sending staff to ensure that the refugees were not deported.
Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said that the talks on the International Health Regulations had closed on Sunday, 27 February. The participants did not finish talking about all the issues, and it was decided that they would meet again on 12 and 13 May, a few days before the World Health Assembly which would be held from 16 to 25 May. They hoped to finalize the document on the International Health Regulations then and present it to the Assembly.
Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said that it was now two months since the tsunami that killed more than 30,000 people in Sri Lanka and IOM had launched a livelihood restoration programme in the country because it believed that getting people back on their feet quickly and into work was imperative for the long-term recovery of the tsunami victims. In Albania, IOM and the Albanian Government had held an international workshop on Albania's cooperation with the European Union to set up a national action plan for migration.
Ms. Pandya said that a new IOM report based on a survey of 1,000 Zimbabwean nationals living in the United Kingdom and South Africa showed that most migrants had not cut their ties with Zimbabwe and were making a vital contribution to the development of the country.
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