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 new statements and reports by the Secretary-General, Geneva meetings, human rights and other issues. Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Labour Office, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Telecommunication Union and the International Organization for Migration participated in the briefing.
New Statements and Reports by the Secretary-General
Mrs. Heuzé said there were a number of new statements by the Secretary-General in the press room. In a statement on Côte d'Ivoire, he strongly condemned the attack by Ivorian armed elements on a village in western Côte d'Ivoire on 31 May and 1 June, which had reportedly resulted in the deaths of at least 41 people. The Secretary-General urged the Ivorian authorities to conduct a full enquiry into the incident and ensure that the perpetrators of the attack were quickly brought to justice. He called on all parties concerned to refrain from any action that may lead to an escalation of tensions between various communities in Côte d'Ivoire.
The Secretary-General also strongly condemned the killing, in a bomb blast in Beirut, of Samir Kassir, a prominent and outspoken Lebanese journalist, and another person in Beirut. The Secretary-General called on the Lebanese Government to bring to justice the perpetrators and the instigators of this terrible crime and to ensure an end to impunity and the continuation of press freedom.
The Director said a day-long High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS was held at Headquarters yesterday to review progress in realizing the commitments set out in the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. In a report prepared for the meeting, the Secretary-General said that despite encouraging signs that the AIDS epidemic was beginning to be contained in a small but growing number of countries, the epidemic continued to expand worldwide. Copies of the report were available in the press room in English and in French as well as copies of the Secretary-General's remarks to the meeting. Also available was a summary of the briefing by UNAIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Recalling the Secretary-General's report "In Larger Freedom" on the reform of the United Nations, Mrs. Heuzé said that two addenda to the report were now available. The first concerned the Secretary-General's proposal to change the Commission on Human Rights into a Human Rights Council. The addendum provided more details on the Secretary-General's proposal, including that the Human Rights Council would be a standing body, able to meet regularly and at any time to deal with imminent crises and to allow for timely and in-depth consideration of human rights issues. The members would be elected by the entire membership of the General Assembly which would make them more accountable and the body more representative. The Council would also have greater authority than the Commission, which was a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council. The Secretary-General also said he believed the Human Rights Council should be located in Geneva to allow it to continue to work in close cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The second addendum to the report concerned the Secretary-General's proposal to establish a Peacebuilding Commission, which he said would provide a central node for helping to create and promote comprehensive strategies for peacebuilding both in general terms and in country situations. It would also provide a forum in which representatives of the United Nations system, major bilateral donors, troop contributors, relevant regional actors and organizations, the international financial institutions and the national or transitional authorities of the country concerned could share information about their respective post-conflict recovery activities, particularly as pertained to achieving coherence between the security/political and development/economic issues, in the interest of greater effectiveness.
Geneva Activities
Mrs. Heuzé said that the Committee on the Rights of the Child would be concluding its spring session today. The Committee's final conclusions on the reports of Saint Lucia, the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Ecuador, Norway, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Yemen, which were considered during the session, would be available in the press room at the end of the morning, or early this afternoon. A roundup press release would also be issued.
The Conference on Disarmament had held the first plenary of the second part of its 2005 session yesterday. The mood and statements by delegations had not been very optimistic as the plenary came in the wake of the seventh Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which the speakers said had been a disappointment and a failure. The next plenary of the Conference would be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 9 June.
World Environment Day was commemorated on 5 June and a number of documents were available in the press room on that occasion. They included copies of the United Nations Environment Programme's "Atlas of our Changing Environment" which was embargoed until Saturday, 4 June. The report was being launched, under embargo, in London and Geneva today at 2 p.m.
The Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, had yesterday met with the governments of the Cantons of Geneva and Bern at the Palais des Nations. Mr. Ordzhonikidze had briefed the Swiss officials about the Secretary-General's UN reform proposals, especially concerning the UN human rights bodies in Geneva.
The Director-General had also met with the Vice Prime Minister of Slovakia yesterday and they spoke about the main priorities of the United Nations and the Secretary-General's reform proposals.
Human Rights
José Luis Díaz, Spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said he just wanted to give journalists a heads up about something which would be happening later this afternoon. Miloon Kothari, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, would be speaking on the situation in Zimbabwe. Journalists might have heard of a campaign by the Government to rid the capital Harare of “illegal structures, businesses and criminal activities”. A number of forced evictions in informal settlements in and around the capital had taken place. The Special Rapporteur was this morning sending an urgent appeal to the Government of Zimbabwe in relation to the campaign. There were reports that 200,000 persons would be affected by this campaign. The Government had announced that more than 22,000 persons had detained or held for various periods of time. Mr. Kothari would be available this afternoon. Journalists asked for a briefing and Mr. Díaz said he would try to set one up.
Other
Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Office said the International Labour Office was continuing with its work at the Palais des Nations. Some 4,000 delegations were attending. She reminded journalists that all the meetings were public and they were welcome to attend. Among other things, there would be a meeting on Myanmar on Saturday, 4 June. And on Monday, 6 June, there would be a panel debate from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on working time around the world. The Algerian President would be addressing the Conference on Tuesday, 7 June at 10 a.m.
Francois Eyraud of the International Labour Office said concerning the panel debate on working time around the world that there was a report on this issue available which had been discussed by Commission of Experts. The debate on working time included issues like the health of workers and ways to regulate unemployment.
Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said she had spoken at the briefing earlier this week about the joint WHO-UNICEF report on basic sanitation. Copies of the report as well as a joint press release were available in the press room. Ms. Chaib reminded journalists that an important meeting on cancer would be held at WHO on 6 and 7 June. Experts estimated that the cases of cancer would increase by 50 per cent in the next 15 years. The meeting was not open to the public, but available was a list of all the experts who would be attending the meeting and contact numbers. There was also a media advisory on this meeting with more information.
Damien Personnaz of the United Nations Children's Fund said the joint WHO-UNICEF press release said that almost 2 billion more persons needed access to basic sanitation by 2015 to meet global targets. Nearly 80 per cent of the world's population had access to clean drinking water, but only between 16 and 20 per cent had access to proper sanitation. More than 5,000 children died from diarrhoeal diseases daily in the world's poorest countries, and poor water and sanitation contributed to almost 90 per cent of these deaths. There were more details in the press release.
Groundbreaking donations totalling almost $ 11.7 million, from the Finnish Government, would benefit an estimated 100,000 children in the Amazon in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, Mr. Personnaz said. The donations would provide intercultural and bi-lingual education, education with an emphasis on girls, vaccinations, and child protection. The money would also consolidate comprehensive interventions on child survival and development, education with an emphasis on girls, and child protection along the border of Ecuador and Peru. This project would benefit more than 60,000 indigenous children and women from ethnic groups.
Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recalled that OCHA had launched an appeal for $ 16.2 million for Niger two weeks ago, but to date, not a single dollar had been pledged to the flash appeal. Available was a press release which had been issued on this issue in New York yesterday.
Ms. Byrs said Yvette Stevens, Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator, would be leaving for a trip with representatives of donor countries to the Central African Republic from 26 June to 3 July. The Central African Republic was a country which had had a period of instability, the indicators were all red, and 60 per cent of its inhabitants lived on less than $ 1 a day. Life expectancy had gone from 49 in 1995 to 43 in 2000. The under-five infant mortality rate was 192 per 1,000 live deaths. Some 30 per cent of children living in rural areas suffered from chronic malnutrition and 14 per cent from severe malnutrition. Some 68 per cent of the population did not have access to clean drinking water. In 2004, an appeal for the Central African Republic only received 38 per cent of the needed amount. This year an appeal which had been launched for $ 23 million had received only $ 1 million in funds. There was also an access problem for humanitarian workers because of the insecurity and the weak infrastructure. Only five international non-governmental organizations worked in the country. Yvette Stevens would brief journalists at the end of the trip.
Jennifer Pagonis of the High Commissions for Refugees said that UNHCR was pleased that the Government of Kyrgyzstan had reiterated its commitment to honour its international agreement that banned the forcible return of asylum seekers who fled violence in neighbouring Uzbekistan. UNHCR also thanked the Government for its commitment to finding a new location for the temporary camp housing the asylum seekers, which was at present too close to the border. Last month, UNHCR had been concerned by media reports that Kyrgyz border guards had deported 86 Uzbeks between 16 and 20 May.
In Burundi, Ms. Pagonis said Songore transit centre in northern Burundi was bursting at the seams with the arrival since Sunday of 4,500 Rwandan asylum seekers who were forced to move to the centre after their previous border sites were torn down by the authorities and a second transit centre was closed. Earlier, UNHCR had expressed concern about the manner in which this relocation was being carried out and also that Songore, which had a capacity for 800 people, would be totally overstretched with the unforeseen arrivals. The 5,400 persons living at the site now were living in very difficult conditions. UNHCR and its partners were doing their utmost to improve the situation in Songore and to rapidly expand the site.
Sarah Parks of the International Telecommunication Union said ITU, in the context of the World Summit on the Information Society, was planning to announce a new initiative entitled "Connect the World" - an umbrella programme which would try to draw together and highlight the many good projects already around the world under the auspices of the UN, private sectors companies, non-governmental organizations and partnerships between all these entities. It was asking the private sector and NGOs to submit projects. The programme would also try to summon up some momentum. A press conference would be held on Thursday, 16 June, at 2:30 p.m. in Room III to introduce this initiative.
Jean Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said that although central Asia had not yet been recognized as a trafficking "hot spot", an IOM report on human trafficking in the region published today showed that trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation was rife in the region. The report mapped out regional trafficking patterns and outlined the links that existed between trafficking and labour migration. It showed that impoverished Tajiks, Kyrgyzs and Uzbeks were trafficked to wealthier Kazakhstan, whilst outside of it, many were trafficked for sexual exploitation to Turkey, Greece and Western Europe, or for labour exploitation, mainly to Russia.
Mrs. Heuzé said that she wanted to point out that the Working Group on contemporary forms of slavery would be meeting in Geneva from 6 to 10 June in Room XXV in public. The Working Group dealt with, among other issues, forced and bonded labour, all forms of sexual exploitation, trafficking in persons and protection of children from all forms of exploitation.
Mr. Chauzy said in Tanzania, IOM's regional office for east and central Africa was today launching a counter trafficking initiative in Tanzania. The one-year project, which was funded by the US Government's Presidential Initiative in Counter-Trafficking of Human Beings, aimed to promote prevention, protection and assistance for victims of trafficking.
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