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 and Representatives of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Tenth Anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention

Ms. Heuzé said the Conference on Disarmament was today being addressed by Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, who was speaking on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Convention of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. There were also a number of other speakers on the speakers’ list (available in the press room). Last Friday, a press kit on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and a press release had been made available to journalists. Copies of the speech by Ambassador Pfirter to the Conference were available at the back of the room. There would be a press encounter with Ambassador Pfirter and Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament, at 12:30.

Peter Kaiser of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said this was the first time that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had come to Geneva, which was the birthplace of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. In the press encounter, Ambassador Pfirter would map out the road ahead to a chemical weapons free world. This was now a very practical and feasible achievement as the Organization was pretty far down the road towards the complete elimination of these weapons. Today, 33 per cent of the world’s stockpiles had been destroyed and this process had to be completed by States parties by 2012. Interested journalists could come to the press encounter for more information on the work which the Organization was carrying out and the challenges ahead. At 3:30 p.m., there would be a seminar in the Council Chamber on how the Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated.

Extreme Weather and Climate Events

Carine Richard-Van Maele of the World Meteorological Organization said a press release had been released today on extreme weather and climate events. Copies were available at the back of the room.

Omar Baddour of the World Meteorological Organization said the weather and climate had been marked by record extremes in many regions across the world since January 2007. Several regions had experienced extremely heavy precipitation, leading to severe floods. During the first half (June and July) of the Indian summer monsoon season, four monsoon depressions, double the normal frequency, had caused heavy rainfall and floods in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These monsoon extremes and incessant rains had caused large-scale flooding all over South Asia, displacing more than 10 million persons. Cyclone Gonu, the first documented cyclone in the Arabian Sea, had affected more than 20,000 persons. In southern China, heavy rains and flooding in June had affected 13.5 million persons. The months of May to July in England and Wales were the wettest since records began in 1766. There had been extensive flooding there too. There were many other examples of this extreme weather in the press release. According to the most recent climate change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the warming of the climate system was unequivocal. IPCC further noted that there had been an increasing trend in the extreme events observed during the last 50 years, particularly heavy precipitation events, hot days, hot nights and heat waves. These events would continue to become more frequent.

Floods in Asia

Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said the monsoon rains in Asia had left millions stranded by floodwaters and in urgent need of fresh water, food and shelter. In India, Nepal and Bangladesh, some 30 million persons were affected, and 40 per cent of those were children. According to Marzio Babille, UNICEF’s health chief in India, many of the affected areas were home to poor communities who suffered from poor sanitation and hygiene year round. Now, entire villages were days away from a health crisis. UNICEF was providing tarpaulin sheets, oral rehydration solutions, water purification tables, emergency medical kits and delivery kits and other supplies, but the needs would be long term. Many thousands could remain homeless for weeks. In Bangladesh, 8 million persons were affected and the situation potentially could worsen rapidly over the coming days. UNICEF was concerned that diarrhoea, cholera and skin diseases were spreading. UNICEF’s response in Bangladesh included high energy biscuits, essential drugs, plastic sheets and family kits. In Nepal, water levels had receded in many districts, but the delivery of vital humanitarian assistance was being hampered by security concerns as well as damage to access routes and infrastructure. There were increasing reports of outbreaks of water-borne diseases, viral fever and skin infections. UNICEF had delivered oral rehydration salts, tarpaulins, buckets, blankets, hygiene kits and water purification supplies.

Simon Pluess of the World Food Programme said so far, only Nepal had asked for international food assistance, and WFP was now feeding 60,000 persons there in a programme that would continue for three months. This was out of 280,000 affected persons in Nepal. WFP and UNICEF were already distributing high energy biscuits in Nepal. No food interventions were planned in India in the absence of an official request. In Pakistan, 2.5 million persons had lost their livelihoods and the Government had welcomed WFP’s distribution of food in the worst affected areas. WFP was on standby to help up to 132,000 persons for three months in Pakistan, should a request be made. Waters might soon subside in these affected countries, but families had lost crops and livelihoods, schooling had been disrupting, the soaring temperatures and the stagnant water could lead to outbreaks of disease, so donors were urged to provide funds for early recovery assistance, including food for reconstruction work.

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said that the information that she had about the outbreak of diseases was similar to what had been said by UNICEF and WFP. WHO had been informed about outbreaks of diarrhoea in a few places in Nepal and Bangladesh. WHO was also concerned about respiratory infections and snake bites. In Nepal, WHO had repositioned health kits and medicine in the worst affected areas. In Bangladesh, there had been 1,400 new diarrhoea cases in the last 24 hours, and WHO was stockpiling emergency medicines for disease outbreak management. WHO was also maintaining surveillance to detect outbreaks quickly. Skin diseases were also common during flooding and there had been such cases. It was important that people had enough food to help them to fight these infections and diseases.

Human Rights and International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

Praveen Randhawa of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was celebrated every year on 9 August. This year, in a joint statement, Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, called on the General Assembly to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in order to provide impetus for renewed efforts by the international community to address the pressing concerns of the world’s 370 million indigenous people, including perhaps the most urgent issue of all: poverty and marginalization. While the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was a celebration of humankind’s diversity and richness, it needed also to serve as a reminder of the continuing exclusion indigenous peoples faced. World leaders committed themselves in the year 2000 to realizing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and in particular reducing poverty by half, by the year 2015. There had been progress towards meeting these commitments but as they reached the mid-point for the realization of these goals, there was increasing evidence that indigenous peoples were largely overlooked in these global efforts. They remained among the poorest of the poor, with little reference to them in the reports on implementation of the MDGs. Halfway to the 2015 deadline for the MDGs, and with the impending adoption of the Declaration by the General Assembly, it was time to call upon States and the international community to reach out to indigenous peoples and ensure that they also benefited from the pledge made by Heads of State at the turn of the millennium.

Arthuso Malo-ay said he belonged to the Higaonons community in the southern Philippines, one of 118 ethnic groups in the Philippines. The Higaonons were a forest dependent people. He was in Geneva participating in the Indigenous Fellowship Programme at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He hoped to use this fellowship to promote the objective of his organization to protect the remaining tropical forest of the Higaonons for the coming generations, and to protect forests around the world in general.

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, said the Secretary-General’s message on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was available in the press room.

Other

Fadela Chaib of the World Food Programme said after the death of a confirmed victim of Marburg Haemorrhagic fever in Uganda last month, there were to date no other suspected cases or victims of this illness which was very similar to Ebola. More than 100 persons who had come into contact with the victim had been checked and no one had been found to be infected with the illness. The international focus would now move to ecological studies of where was the reservoir of this illness.

Jennifer Pagonis of the High Commissioner for Refugees said starting 8 August, UNHCR, along with other UN humanitarian agencies, were launching a relief operation to get help to some 26,000 refugees from the Central African Republic who after fleeing insecurity in their own country were now living in precarious conditions scattered along the eastern border of Cameroon. The refugees, from western and north-west Central African Republic, were mainly Mbororo nomadic cattle herders. They had arrived in several waves since 2005 in the east and Adamaoua areas of Cameroon after fleeing their villages because of insecurity and relentless targeting by rebel groups and bandits who stole their cattle and kidnapped women and children for ransom. UNHCR was coordinating the relief operation, which included the World Food Programme, UNICEF and UNFPA.

Ms. Pagonis said in Sudan, UNHCR and its Sudanese governmental counterpart, the Commissioner for Refugees, had recommended that thousands of new arrivals from Chad who had crossed over to Darfur in recent months be recognized by the Government of Sudan as refugees on a prima facie basis. Families interviewed by the joint UNHCR and COR teams said that they left Chad after armed men wearing military uniforms entered their homes, searching for weapons, and accused villagers of supporting and participating in militia activities. People interviewed said that searches often turned violent with looting, beatings, arrests, murders and in some cases rapes committed by these groups. In addition to the brutal searches, many families said they left Chad because of the general insecurity and fighting between governmental forces and opposition groups.

Jean Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said as Côte d'Ivoire celebrated today its 47th Independence Day with renewed calls for peace and unity, more and more internally displaced persons were asking for IOM's assistance to return to and resettle in their former areas of residence in Western Côte d'Ivoire. The return and reintegration of IDPs followed extensive efforts deployed by IOM and its partners to promote reconciliation over complex land issues between communities of displaced Ivorian migrant land workers from the central and northern regions and West African migrant workers.

In Sudan, an IOM air operation to help internally displaced people who had been living in Khartoum for many years to return to their homes in the south of the country had ended. In Mali, the IOM office in Bamako was launching a project to find out how Malians abroad could best contribute to the development of their home country. In Thailand, IOM and the Thai Ministry of Social Development and Human Security yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Implementation of Projects Addressing Trafficking in Persons and Assistance to at- Risk Groups. In Afghanistan, a three-day training of 30 Afghan law enforcement officers organized by IOM and led by Tajik counterparts ended in Kabul yesterday. At the event, the Afghan and Tajik officials also jointly reviewed Afghanistan's Counter-Trafficking Bill. In Libya, IOM, in partnership with the Libyan Ministry of Interior, the Waatasimu Charity Association and the US Embassy in Tripoli, was carrying out two follow-up human trafficking awareness workshops for 50 law enforcement officials and members of charity associations.

Cathy Jewell of the World Intellectual Property Organization said there would be a press conference in press room 1 on Thursday, 9 August, at 11 a.m. to launch WIPO’s Patent Report 2007.