REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Trade Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the International Organization for Migration.

New Statements by the Secretary-General

Ms. Heuzé said available in the press room were two new statements by the Secretary-General. On the situation in Kenya, the Secretary-General warmly welcomed the "Agreement on the Principles of Partnership of the Coalition Government. He said the "Acting together for Kenya" agreement marked a breakthrough toward resolving the crisis and gave hope to the people of Kenya for a return to democratic stability in their country. He commended President Mwai Kibaki and Mr. Raila Odinga, for the spirit of compromise they demonstrated in reaching this accord. He also congratulated Kofi Annan and the Panel of Eminent African Personalities for their pivotal contribution in the mediation.

In his statement on the situation in the Middle East, the Secretary-General said he was deeply concerned at the loss of civilian life in Southern Israel and Gaza, and at the escalation of violence that had been taking place. He said these events underscored the urgent need for a calming of violence, and must not be allowed to deter the continuation of the political process.

Secretary-General to Address Human Rights Council and UNCTAD

Ms. Heuzé said she could now confirm that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will address the opening meeting of the seventh regular session of the Human Rights Council at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, 3 March in the Assembly Hall.

Preparations for the Council, which would meet from 3 to 28 March, were continuing. The President of the Council, Ambassador Doru Romulus Costea of Romania, was giving a press conference today at noon in Room III to talk about the issues before the session, which was the Council’s principal session for 2008.

Ms. Heuzé said she would give journalists the provisional agenda of the Secretary-General’s two-day visit to Geneva on Monday morning. In addition to his statement to the Council, Mr. Ban would also be addressing the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development at 3 p.m. in Room XVIII. Embargoed copies of both statements would be made available to journalists on Monday. The Secretary-General would remain at the Council until around 11:45 a.m. There was a possibility that he would meet with the Foreign Minister of Serbia, before having a private lunch with the Foreign Minister of France, and he had a number of other bilateral meetings with dignitaries who were attending the high-level segment of the Council which would be held from 3 to 5 March. No press conference was being organized for the Secretary-General because the visit was so short. He would be leaving on Tuesday.

For plannification purposes, Ms. Heuzé said she was making available to journalists the provisional list of some fifty dignitaries who would be addressing the Council during the high-level segment. She would also provide the list of dignitaries who would be addressing the Conference on Disarmament in meetings on 3, 4 and 5 March.

A number of press conferences had been requested by the visiting dignitaries, including by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights of France at 5:30 p.m. on 3 March, and by the Foreign Minister of Iran at noon on 5 March. They were also trying to organize other press conferences.

Catherine Pinot Sibut of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would be addressing the forty-third executive session of the Trade and Development Board of UNCTAD at 3 p.m. on Monday, 3 March, in Room XVIII. The Secretary-General’s address to the meeting, coming after his statement to ECOSOC in mid-January, was a strong sign of his support for the issue of development and the UNCTAD XII meeting which would be held from 20 to 25 April in Accra, Ghana. Available was the first press release about UNCTAD XII.

Ms. Heuzé said a background release in English and in French was available with details of the main issues before the Council during the upcoming session. The first half of the first week would be devoted to the high-level segment, and then the Council would start an interactive dialogue on the reports of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and those of a number of Special Procedures. The Council would meet for the first week in the Assembly Hall, and then would move to Room XVII. The Council this session would be electing the 18 Members of its Advisory Committee which replaced the Sub-Committee on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and which would meet for the first time this summer. The Council would also appoint new Special Procedures after concluding its review, rationalization and improvement of mandates process. The Council’s meetings would be webcast, press releases would be issued in English and in French, and journalists could also either attend the Council’s meetings or listen in to them.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said yesterday, the Human Rights Council had completed the first drawing of lots for the selection of “troikas” for the Universal Periodic Review. The troikas were the group of three Council members who would serve as rapporteurs for the countries being reviewed under the Council’s Universal Periodic Review mechanism. The selections were made for the first two sessions of the Review, taking place from 7 to 18 April and 5 to 16 May. During each two-week session, 16 members would be reviewed. Copies of the list of “troikas” were available in the press room, as well as a Presidential Statement endorsed by the Council yesterday with more information on how the process would work.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was concluding its consideration of the report of the Dominican Republic this morning, and in the afternoon, it would be consider the situation in Gambia, Monaco, the United Arab Emirates and Panama under its review procedures for States parties whose reports were seriously overdue. The Committee would be issuing its observations and recommendations on the reports of the countries which it had considered during this session on Friday, 7 March.

Ms. Heuzé said the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces would be holding a seminar on Tuesday, 4 March, to mark the anniversary of the holding by the United Nations Security Council of its first ever open debate on the topic of security sector reform on 20 February 2007 under the Presidency of the Slovak Republic. Given the presence in Geneva of a multitude of actors with strong capacity and in-depth expertise in security sector reform, this seminar provided a timely opportunity to assess the progress achieved and political, institutional and operational challenges faced in the year since the open debate and an early platform for the discussion of the Secretary-General's report on security sector reform, which was released this month (S/2008/39). The event would be held at the Palais des Nations, starting at 9:30 a.m. and finishing at 12:30 p.m. It would begin with a keynote speech by Ján Kubiš, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic, which would be followed by a panel discussion.

Refugees

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR estimated that an additional 3,000 refugees from West Darfur had arrived in eastern Chad's Birak area over the past week, bringing to more than 13,000 the number of Sudanese believed to have fled to the remote area since fighting erupted on 8 February. A UNHCR team which reached the Birak area this week reported that the new arrivals fled the Jebel Moun region of West Darfur following repeated aerial and ground attacks by militia.
Another UNHCR mission that was scheduled to go to Birak area today was cancelled due to inter-ethnic clashes near Kulbus in eastern Chad, north of Birak. UNHCR staff in the Kulbus area yesterday saw black smoke rising from a burning village and saw armed men on horseback in the area. The insecurity and close proximity to the Sudanese border meant UNHCR could not establish a camp in the Birak area, but it was trying to provide emergency assistance when its teams could get there.

Meanwhile in Cameroon, Mr. Redmond said UNHCR continued to bring additional supplies to assist thousands of Chadian refugees who fled unrest earlier this month in the Chadian capital N'Djamena and had found refuge in Kousseri area. An Ilyushin-76 chartered by UNHCR left Copenhagen on Wednesday and landed yesterday (Thursday) in Garoua, bringing 42 tonnes of relief items including tents and water bladders. A second plane was expected to land today from Dubai, also bringing 42 tonnes of assistance items including tents, plastic sheeting, blankets, and jerry cans.

Mr. Redmond said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres would be beginning on Monday, 3 March, an eight-day mission to Uganda and Tanzania to review the implementation of UNHCR programmes for refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons in the two countries.
During the Tanzanian leg of the trip, the High Commissioner would inaugurate a two-year programme to end one of the world's oldest protracted refugee situations - the exile of some 218,000 Burundians who fled their country in 1972. It would be one of UNHCR’s most important programmes on the African continent this year. In Uganda, the first leg of the mission, Mr. Guterres would visit Mulanda transit centre hosting some 1,600 of the nearly 12,000 Kenyans who fled the post-electoral violence in their country. He would then proceed to see internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had returned to their homes in the Pader district of northern Uganda. More than 950,000 Ugandan IDPs had returned or were preparing to return to their homes since the movements started in 2006. Mr. Guterres was also scheduled to visit Arua, where he would witness the repatriation of south Sudanese refugees. Since the start of UNHCR-run voluntary repatriations in May 2006, almost 35,000 Sudanese had returned home from Uganda. During the visit to Uganda, the High Commissioner would be joined by the Luxembourg Minister for Development, Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, Jean-Louis Schiltz. Luxembourg was by far UNHCR's top donor per capita, contributing $25 per inhabitant in 2006 and 2007.

Mr. Redmond said the last week had seen a spate of arrivals on Italy's shores, with over a thousand boat people embarking on the hazardous crossing from Libya. Most of the migrants and asylum seekers landed in Lampedusa, while 41 reached the island of Pantelleria and 35 were rescued off the coast of Sardinia in two separate incidents last weekend. The arrivals set a new record for this time of the year, when the number of crossings was generally limited due to harsh weather conditions.
Most of the migrants were Somalis, Tunisians, Nigerians, Moroccans, Ghanaians, Palestinians and Algerians. Last year, a total of 19,900 people arrived in Italy's islands or the mainland by boat from North Africa, compared with 22,000 in 2006. At least 471 were reported dead or missing in 2007.
A permanent team staffed by UNHCR and its project partners, the Italian Red Cross and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), had been operating on the island of Lampedusa since March 2006.

Other

Janaina Borges of the World Trade Organization said today, there would be a briefing on the ongoing agriculture negotiations at WTO. Director-General Pascal Lamy was today in Maseru, Lesotho where he was scheduled to meet with King Letsie III and to participate in the Least Developed Countries Ministerial Meeting. On Saturday, 1 March, the Director-General would be in Pretoria, South Africa, where he was scheduled to meet with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Trevor Manuel, South Africa's Minister of Finance, and Mandisi Mpahlwa, South Africa's Minister of Trade and Industry. Next week, in Geneva, Mr. Lamy would be meeting with Switzerland's Federal Counsellor for Foreign Affairs on 3 March; and Norway's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Kazakhstan's Minister of Foreign Affairs on 4 March. WTO would be holding informal negotiations on industrial goods on 3 March and the Trade and Development Committee would be meeting on 4 March.

Teresa Buerkle of the Food and Agriculture Organization said there was a press release at the back of the room on FAO assistance to the livestock sector in Afghanistan. It was an update on the situation. This week, FAO received a commitment from the Economic Commission for Europe to provide 500 tons of animal feed, in addition to the 80 tons of animal feed that had already been distributed.

Ms. Buerkle said FAO’s regional conference for the Near East was beginning on Saturday, 1 March in Cairo and would run until 5 March. On 3 March, the Director-General of the FAO would address the meeting and a press release would be issued.

Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said the situation in Madagascar was very difficult following the passage of cyclone Ivan through the country. The cyclone killed 83 persons, left 300,000 without shelter, and destroyed thousands of hectares of rice paddies. Five hundred schools had been destroyed and thousands of children were not able to go to school. Many people did not have access to clean water. There was a risk of the spread of water-borne diseases like diahrea, as well as the spread of measles and respiratory diseases. UNICEF, its UN and other partners, as well as the office of national catastrophes, were mobilizing all their resources to help families in need. According to the UNICEF team in Madagascar, the situation was dramatic in the worst affected areas which were totally devastated by the cyclone. There was an urgent need for water and sanitation. UNICEF was distributing sanitary kits. An emergency appeal would today be launched for the victims of the cyclone.

Ms. Taveau said UNICEF welcomed the political agreement in Kenya as a positive sign for the lives and hopes of the children of Kenya.

In Somalia, Ms. Taveau said urgently needed money for the emergency appeal for Somalia had started to arrive, but it was crucial for donor countries to re-enforce their engagement so that the essential programmes for child could continue to function. The funds so far were not enough to cover the urgent needs of children in Somalia.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration thanked those who had attended the performance of “The Seventh Kafana” at Alhambra Theatre yesterday. The play described the plight of victims of trafficking. “The Seventh Kafana” was originally developed in Moldova as part of an IOM counter-trafficking programmed funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and cooperation. The play was followed by a round table discussion on what could be done to fight human trafficking. More than 700 priests and pastors were now involved in counter-trafficking prevention techniques in Moldova thanks to efforts by IOM and its partners to engage religious leaders in the battle against this crime. In Georgia, more than 300 Georgian soldiers, both commissioned and non-commissioned officers, had completed an IOM training on combating human trafficking in the country. And in Haiti, the results of IOM’s capacity Building in Migration Management project in Haiti were presented and discussed this week at a national wrap-up seminar in Port-au-Prince.