REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

Appointments by the Secretary-General

Ms. Heuzé said that on Friday, 9 February 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had named four new senior officials to his cabinet while retaining a dozen others. Mr. Ban had named a United States diplomat as chief political officer, a Chinese veteran of international organizations to head economic and social affairs, a Japanese international civil servant to manage public information and an Egyptian diplomat to oversee General Assembly management. B. Lynn Pascoe, currently US Ambassador to Indonesia, was appointed Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, succeeding Ibrahim Gambari, a Nigerian. Ambassador Sha Zukang, currently China’s Permanent Representative to the UN Office at Geneva, was named Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs in succession to José Antonio Ocampo of Colombia. Kiyotaka Akasaka of Japan, currently Deputy Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was named Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, succeeding Shashi Tharoor of India. Muhammad Shaaban of Egypt, currently National Coordinator for Reform Initiatives in the Middle East, was named Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management, succeeding Jian Chen of China.

Ms. Heuzé said that, as journalists were aware, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikize, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, had been reconfirmed in his post.

Sudan

Ms. Heuzé said that Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, and Salim Ahmed Salim, his African Union counterpart, had arrived to Khartoum for a five-day joint mission to Sudan. The joint mission, the first to be carried out by the two officials since their appointment, was part of UN-AU efforts to re-energize the Darfur political process. The Envoys had said that they would be holding a series of meetings in Khartoum and Darfur with signatories and non-signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement, to whom they would be delivering a strong message: the urgent need to have a cessation of hostilities on the ground, to facilitate the humanitarian operations and to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population. That in turn would create the conditions for a credible and all-inclusive political process. The UN Mission, in its daily bulletin, had reported that violence in Darfur was forcing thousands of people to be on the move in a number of locations and had also noted the need for a resumption of urgently required humanitarian assistance in some areas.

In response to a question on the Human Rights Council Mission to Darfur, Ms. Heuzé said that, as scheduled, the Mission members were in Addis Ababa awaiting their visas. It would be necessary to wait until the end of day to see where the visa issue stood.

Middle East

Ms. Heuzé said the Secretary-General had spoken on the phone Saturday with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and had also spoken on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, reiterating the terms of the Quartet statement released at UN Headquarters in New York on Friday and the need to support the agreement reached in Mecca. Quartet members, the statement said, would meet on 21 February in Berlin to continue their consideration of these developments and to review formation and implementation of the agreement on the Government.

Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy

Sergei Ordzhonikidze, UNOG Director-General would be in Vienna on 14 February 2007 to take part in the annual High-level meeting between United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and partner organizations in the “Tripartite” format under the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. This year’s High-level meeting is dedicated to the implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, and a wide range of representatives from the United Nations system would participate. The European Commission, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Organization for Migration had been invited as affiliated members. This year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Collective Security Treaty Organization had also been invited to attend.

Geneva activities

Ms. Heuzé announced that a special stock-taking session of the Internet Governance Forum would take place today in room XX. The meeting will be chaired by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor for Internet Governance, Nitin Desai, who previously served as his special adviser for the World Summit on the Information Society and representative in Athens. Mr. Desai and Markus Kummer, Executive Chairman of the IGF Secretariat, would give a press conference at 2 p.m. in press room 1.

UN Refugee Agency

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR was seeking $62 million for its 2007 programmes aimed at helping hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees as well as internally displaced people within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) itself. The Agency needed $47 million this year to support the return and reintegration of some 98,500 Congolese refugees returning home, as well as a further $15 million to provide protection and assistance programmes for an estimated 1.1 million internally displaced people (IDP) in the DRC. More than 400,000 Congolese still lived in exile, virtually all of them in nine neighbouring countries. They lived in camps or designated areas and most had no resources to return on their own. Some had spent decades in exile, waiting for lasting peace to return.

Regarding Yemen, he said that once again the Gulf of Aden had claimed the lives of at least 30 Somalis and Ethiopians when the boat smuggling them from Somalia to Yemen capsized on approach to the Yemeni coast on Monday. UNHCR currently had sketchy, unconfirmed reports that up to 78 may have died. The dead were being buried near the beach. Three other boats with some 120 people aboard dropped their passengers offshore and left. All passengers on those three boats apparently made it to shore. In less than a month, a dramatic increase in people smuggling from Somalia had been witnessed, with over 1,600 arrivals in Yemen aboard some 20 boats. At least 30 people had died making earlier voyages since mid-January.

In Damascus and Amman, the number of Iraqis wanting to register with UNHCR had dramatically increased over the past few days. On Sunday and Monday, UNHCR Syria received and provided registration application papers to over 5,000 people, while UNHCR Amman met with an estimated 700 Iraqis on both days and registered a quarter of them.

Meanwhile, High Commissioner Antonio Guterres had completed his weeklong Mid-East mission on Saturday 10 February and was now in the United States, where he was expected to discuss the Iraq displacement situation and UNHCR's humanitarian work with senior US officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Other

Ms. Heuzé announced that the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre would be launching its Report Card 7: Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries on 14 February 2007 in Berlin. A press release embargoed until 10 a.m. GMT on 14 February was available in the back of the room together with a list of spokespersons available for interview.

Also available was a UNICEF press release announcing the holding in Europe and Central Asia of a series of three-day high-level symposia on pandemic flu. The symposia are taking place within the framework of the UN System Influenza Coordinator (UNSIC) in close collaboration with WHO, World Bank, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and other partners.

Simon Pluess of the United Nations World Food Programme said that WFP had condemned the looting of three food warehouses in Guinea over the weekend, resulting in the loss of nearly 450 metric tons of food aid destined for school children and the poorest communities. WFP estimates the value of the losses at US$ 350,000. In addition, WFP's office in Kankan was attacked by a mob throwing stones, forcing the evacuation of the only international staff across the border into Mali.
Further disturbances, again involving local inhabitants, near the town of Labé in central Guinea over the weekend had caused the loss of a further 97 metric tons of food commodities from two warehouses belonging to WFP's government partners – in Pita (Saturday) and Dalaba (Sunday). The violence which is sweeping through Guinea forced WFP last weekend to suspend temporarily all its operations, although February distributions to the most needy Liberian and Ivorian refugees had been completed.

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization said that in response to an outbreak of yellow fever in Togo in December 2006, a joint investigation team from Togo’s Ministry of Health and WHO had recommended a vaccination campaign. The campaign would take place in the regions concerned and would use 1,550,000 vaccination doses from the emergency stock of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). The campaign would be conducted with the support of the World Health Organization, the European Commission’s Humanitarian Office (ECHO) and UNICEF.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said that an unseaworthy vessel transporting hundreds of male Asian and African undocumented migrants had docked on Monday 12 February in the northern Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou after more than a week in international waters off the cost of the West African state. The ship had landed shortly before noon and by evening all 369 migrants had been allowed to disembark from the Marine 1. Michael Tschanz, heading the IOM team in Nouadhibou, said “IOM is relieved that a solution was found to end the migrants’ ordeal at sea”. “We will work with our partners to ensure that those migrants who wish to return home on a voluntary basis can do so as soon as possible.”

Jean-Philippe Chauzy added that West Africa remained a major smuggling route for irregular migration to Europe, particularly from South Asia. With increased land and sea border controls, smuggling networks had moved departure points further south from Morocco, to Mauritania, to Senegal and now to Guinea Conakry. The longer sea journeys exposed the migrants to even further dangers.