REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which provided information about meetings in Geneva, the World Health Assembly, human rights, the emergency appeal for refugees from Togo in Benin, the situation in Darfur, and other issues. Spokespersons for the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the Economic Commission for Europe, the World Trade Organization, the High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration.

Geneva Meetings

Mrs . Heuzé said before giving the floor to Spokesperson for the World Health Organization who would speak about the World Health Assembly, which was starting on Monday, 16 May, at the Palais des Nations, she wanted to point out that Monday was a day off for the United Nations. The radio studio would exceptionally stay open to provide its services to the journalists covering the Assembly.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was today wrapping up its three-week session at the Palais des Nations during which it examined the reports of Zambia, China, Serbia and Montenegro and Norway. The Committee's final conclusions would be released later in the day and a roundup press release would be issued.

The Director said the Committee against Torture was continuing its three-week session at the Palais Wilson. This morning, the Committee would be discussing its general guidelines regarding the form and content of initial reports to be submitted by States parties. The Director recalled that part of the Secretary-General's proposed reforms for the human rights treaty bodies included the way that States parties to the human rights conventions had to present periodic reports to the committees monitoring them. For large and developed countries, producing a report to each committee every few years was not problematic. But for small and developing countries, such reports were a problem because of the lack of human and financial resources and expertise. Next week, the Committee would be meeting in private to discuss individual communications from persons who claimed that their rights under the Convention against Torture had been violated by a State party. The Committee against Torture, which was concluding its session on Friday, 20 May, had considered reports presented by Togo, Canada, Switzerland, Finland, Albania, Uganda and Bahrain.

Mrs. Heuzé said the Committee on the Rights of the Child would be opening its thirty-ninth session on Tuesday, 17 May and it would last until 3 June. A background press release was already in the press room. The Committee would be reviewing the situation of children in Saint Lucia, the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Ecuador, Norway, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Yemen.

The first part of the 2005 annual session of the International Law Commission was drawing to an end. The Director reminded journalists that available was a list of the 34 members of the Commission as well as a list of contact numbers. It was agreed that if any journalist was interested in an interview with any of the members of the Commission, he or she could contact the Information Service to set it up.

The Director said that on Tuesday, 17 May, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, would be attending an inauguration ceremony at the Palais des Nations during which the environmental organization Green Cross International and Green Cross Japan would present to UNOG 20 solar powered street lamps. The lamps had been donated by the Green Cross Organization to UNOG as a symbolic gesture in support of renewable energies. The presence of these lamps were in themselves a display of the United Nations' support and commitment to securing environmental sustainability and built on its many partnerships with international organizations, civil society and the private sector towards that goal. A note to correspondents was available with more details.

World Health Assembly

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said available at the back of the room was a note for the press on preparations for the fifty-eighth World Health Assembly which would take place from 16 to 25 May. The Assembly would be tackling a number of critical health issues, including progress on the issue of access to treatment for AIDS, progress on polio, preparations in case of a flu epidemic and a new global immunization strategy. Copies of the order of the day would always be made available in press room 1 and the Documentation Centre at the Palais and would also be on the website. The Assembly would open at 10 a.m. on Monday. In the afternoon, starting 3 p.m., Lee Jong-wook, Director-General of WHO, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives, and Bill Gates, Co-Founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would address the plenary. The note also contained an abbreviated version of the issues to be tackled by the Assembly for the rest of its session. She noted that Mr. Gates would give a press conference at 9 a.m. on Monday, adding that it would be embargoed until after he gave his speech on Monday afternoon.

Ms. Chaib said that also available was a media advisory on a new global partnership which would strengthen health information systems. There would be a press conference on Tuesday, 17 May at 12:30 p.m. by the Director-General of WHO and others to launch the Health Metrics Network. There would also be daily briefings from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. daily in Room III to brief the press about the day's events

The Director told journalists that on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly, there would be a press conference on Tuesday, 17 May at 2:30 p.m. in Room III by Mike Leavitt, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services; Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention; and Stewart Simonson, Assistant Secretary of Health for Public Health Emergency Preparedness.

Human Rights

José Luis Díaz, Spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was currently finalizing arrangements for the establishment of a human rights operation in Uganda as a way of helping to strengthen the international response to the abuses and violations occurring in northern Uganda as a result of the conflict there. The Office hoped that this new country office would be operational by next month. The Office was currently in the process of recruiting the monitors who would go to northern and eastern parts of Uganda to do monitoring and to carry out training and capacity-building of local actors. The Office would also be working with the National Ugandan Human Rights Commission and with the UN country team in Uganda as a way to come up with an integrated strategy to respond to the situation. The one thing that was still lacking at this moment was the conclusion of the formal agreement between the Office and Uganda on the setting up of the operation. The Office expected that would happen very soon.

In response to a question, Mr. Díaz said he did not think that the Office had a magic formula for solving the situation in northern Uganda. He thought that what everybody could agree that was necessary was the need to strengthen the international presence there, dealing specifically with human rights. There was an international presence in Uganda dealing with the humanitarian situation. The human rights situation was extremely delicate and very serious. In a number of places, the Office had seen that having an international monitoring presence contributed to at least preventing violations. If only that, already it would be a significant contribution to the situation in northern Uganda. He believed that there was a lot that human rights monitors could do there. Recently, the Office had employed people to another very difficult situation, in Nepal.

Asked how many monitors would be sent to northern Uganda and what the latest figure was for the children abducted by the rebel movement, Mr. Díaz said it was expected that the formal agreement with Uganda would be signed in the coming weeks. Once that had happened, he would feel more comfortable giving out figures of staff who would be sent there and where they would be going.

The President of the United Nations Correspondents' Association said that on behalf of the ACANU Committee, he wanted to know if having a briefing with the Chairperson of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights today was still possible. Also, he requested that the conclusions of the Committee be released in a timely manner. He said releasing the roundup and the final conclusions after 6 p.m., as had been indicated, was too late for many colleagues.

The Director said that issuing the press releases was carried out by the Information Service which would issue the press release as soon as the final conclusions were made available by the Committee.

Mr. Díaz said concerning the request for the briefing, he had relayed it to the Committee and the answer that came back was that due to the heavy agenda of the Committee members, a briefing would not be possible. He regretted that. He had also conveyed the concerns of journalists about the release of the final conclusions and observations. It was obvious that the sooner journalists had copies of them, the better it was for them as they could do their work in time, while the Committee would benefit from more exposure. However, the Committee had taken a decision whereby it made concluding observations public on 6 p.m. of the last day of any given session.

In response to another question, the Director and Mr. Díaz said that they would contact the Committee again after the briefing. They had already been in touch with the Committee’s secretariat earlier this week.

A journalist said this was not the first time that one of the human rights committees refused a briefing or delayed the release of its conclusions, usually when they were considering reports from countries which were newsworthy. She said maybe the Office should decide on a standard practise by the treaty bodies at the end of their sessions.

In response, Mr. Díaz said the treaty bodies were independent organs that established their own working procedures. There was limited influence that the Office had over those procedures. The Office could give advice, which was sometimes accepted and sometimes not. What he could do was to convey the concerns of journalists to the Committee again and hope to come up with a reasonable compromise. The Office could not establish a procedure or position for the treaty bodies.

Another journalist said it was ironic because usually these Committees talked about transparency, maybe the Office could "throw that word back at them". A journalist asked if the Committee had received a request orally or in writing by a State party about not giving a briefing. Mr. Díaz said he would ask. (The Committee's secretariat later indicated that no such request had been received.)

Emergency Appeal for Togolese Refugees in Benin

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that today, the UN system would be launching an emergency appeal for the Togolese refugees in Benin. The appeal was for $ 4.970 million to assist 20,000 refugees in Togo for six months. The appeal was being made on the basis of an assessment carried out by the United Nations. Main areas of need for the refugees were protection, shelter, food, water, education, health and community services, among others. Some 70 per cent of the refugees had been taken in by local families and the appeal included direct assistance to the refugees in the camps and also direct assistance to these local families.

Ron Redmond of the High Commissioner for Refugees said in Togo, the post-electoral refugee outflow from Togo into neighbouring Benin and Ghana had slowed down across the major border crossing points but pockets of refugees who had crossed over informally had been recently located in both countries, pushing the combined total of refugees to 26,084. A joint UN inter-agency food needs assessment mission was now taking place along a 200 kilometre stretch of the eastern border with Togo and its findings were expected next week.

Darfur

Simon Pluess of the World Food Programme said journalists might have heard that there were two separate attacks by gunmen on WFP-contracted trucks in south Darfur. This had cost the lives of the two drivers. Apart from sadness of course for the unnecessary killings, WFP realized that these attacks were efforts to sabotage WFP's efforts to pre-position enough food in Darfur before the rainy season. WFP was now finding it very difficult to find enough drivers to transport food. WFP believed that this atmosphere of violence and the general climate of lawlessness and insecurity could not continue. WFP was meeting with local officials to check on the security situation and see how such attacks could be stopped. Despite the insecurity, WFP in April provided food aid to 1.57 million. Last year, WFP estimated that it needed to feed some 2.8 million in Darfur at the height of the rainy season in July and August. Now, WFP was planning for a worst case scenario, raising the number to 3.25 million persons in Darfur. It still had a shortfall for 38 per cent of its 2005 appeal for Darfur.

The Director wished to point out the Secretary-General's monthly report on Darfur was available. It had been discussed at a meeting of the Security Council on the situation in Darfur yesterday. The Secretary-General in his report said that "In April, both the rebel movements and the militias continued to manoeuvre to improve their positions while the peace talks remained stalled. Both sides are thus guilty of violating existing agreements and previous resolutions. However, militia attacks are by far the greatest cause of terror and suffering for civilians. While it has been noted that the Government has restrained its forces, it has still not taken action to stop militia attacks and end the climate of impunity that encourages those responsible for ongoing violations". Copies of the report in English and in French were available in the Documentation Centre.

Mrs. Heuzé also said that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Adviser Lakhdar Brahimi and the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno were heading for Sudan yesterday for a week to discuss ways the UN could help with the various peace processes underway, particularly the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur. Mr. Brahimi, who had been in close contact with the African Union on the scope and nature of UN support to the Union's mission in Darfur, would be following up on those contacts during his visit, which would focus on the war-riven region in Sudan's west. the purpose of Mr. Guéhenno's fact-finding mission was to gain the best possible understanding of the situation in wider Sudan, as well as the UN response

Other

Jean-Michel Jakobowicz of the Economic Commission for Europe said a press release would be available shortly on the entry into force on 17 May of the Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone to the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The Protocol aimed to cut emissions of sulphur, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ammonia from energy generation, industrial sources, motor vehicles, agriculture and products.

Lucie Giraud of the World Trade Organization said that concerning the selection of the new Director-General of WTO, there would be an informal meeting of heads of delegations at 5 p.m. this afternoon during which the President of the General Council would announce the result. A briefing would be held at WTO after the meeting. Available in the press room was a timetable for the meetings which were scheduled for next week.

Ron Redmond of the High Commissioner for Refugees said UNHCR was extremely concerned about reports from some Rwandan asylum seekers in Burundi that indicated that physical and verbal intimidation were being used to force them to go home. The asylum seekers said Burundian soldiers had beaten them up with batons last Wednesday and told them they would be beaten again unless they left Burundi. When UNHCR staff arrived to the site the next day, only a few hundred of the 1,500 asylum seekers were still around. UNHCR had contacted the Burundian authorities, and had asked for UN peacekeepers in Burundi forces to be present at the sites in the border area. It was difficult to know how many of the 7,000 Rwandans who had arrived in Burundi since early April had left. The asylum seekers had fled Burundi because of fears over the "gacaca" tribunals looking into the Rwandan genocide. They also cited threats and rumours of massacres and revenge attacks as reasons for leaving the country.

In Chad, UNHCR was deeply concerned about violence in camps in eastern Chad earlier this week which had resulted in the deaths of four persons. The camps were now reported to be calm.

Jean Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization said that IOM, working with the Government of Haiti, had recently signed the first nationwide grant designed to help women participate in the country's political future, as stipulated in the national dialogue. The national dialogue, launched in February by the interim government and the United Nations Development Programme, aimed to include all Haitians across the country into the country's political future.

In Indonesia, Mr. Chauzy said the first two of 55 Satellite Health Clinics which IOM was building for the tsunami-affected population of Aceh province opened yesterday to traditional dance performances and the sounds of singing children. Funded by the Japanese Government and equipped by AmeriCares, the clinics were a simple adaptation of the temporary housing units that IOM was erecting around Aceh.

Complaint

A journalist said that he wanted to inform the Information Service that he would no longer honour the embargoes set by the ILO for their reports. This related to the report on forced labour which was released earlier this week. He had observed the embargo despite repeated requests by his radio station for a piece, and then he discovered that an ILO press conference had been held in Berlin before the embargo time. The ILO was clearly incapable of handling its publicity of reports in a fair manner to Geneva based journalists and he was no longer willing to accept that.

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