REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons of the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Human Rights Council

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Human Rights Council had opened its ninth regular session yesterday, which would be held until 26 September 2008, under the Presidency of Ambassador Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi of Nigeria. Yesterday morning, the new High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanetham Pillay, had addressed the Council for the first time. Yesterday afternoon, the Council had drawn lots to select the country troikas which will be tasked with the examination of States undergoing their Universal Periodic Review, for the next three sessions of that mechanism. The Council also determined the order of review of States.

This morning, the Council was scheduled to discuss its programme of work for the current session and to conclude its general debate on the activities of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for children in armed conflict was also scheduled to address the Council today. In addition, the Council planned to hold an interactive dialogue with three different Special Procedure mandate holders, namely the Special Rapporteurs on the human rights of indigenous people; on toxic waste; on contemporary forms of slavery; and on the sale of children; and the Independent Expert on international solidarity.

Conference on Disarmament

Turning to the activities of the Conference on Disarmament, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that this morning the Conference was holding what should be its last plenary meeting of its 2008 session, whose third and last part was officially ending on Friday, 12 September. The Conference, currently chaired by Ambassador German Mundarain Hernandez of Venezuela, was scheduled to adopt its annual report to the General Assembly, before closing its 2008 session.

Activities of the Director-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that Sergei Ordzhonikidze, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, was scheduled to address the opening of the Ministerial Review Summit on the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development on 12 September 2008, at the World Meteorological Organization. The Summit was being jointly organized by the Swiss Government and the United Nations Development Programme and would also be opened by Ms. Micheline Calmy-Rey, Swiss Federal Councillor and Head of Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Two years after the launch of the Geneva Declaration, the Review Summit would examine progress in implementation and provide guidance for the further strengthening of the nexus between security and development. To date, 94 countries had signed the Declaration.

Hurricanes in the Caribbean

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that “Ike” was the fourth tropical storm hitting Haiti successively, since 15 August. Even though the centre of the hurricane had not directly touched Haiti, it had significantly impacted it. Some 800,000 people were in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations was thus planning to announce a flash appeal on Wednesday. Heavy rains had been reported in the north, particularly in the area of Port de Paix, Anse Rouge and Gonaives. Several bridges had been destroyed or seriously damaged, limiting the access to the affected regions. The situation was a real logistic nightmare, and was particularly precarious in Gonaives, which was not accessible by road. On Sunday, the airport in Port-au-Prince had been closed during the day, which had further impeded the transportation of humanitarian assistance. Access by helicopter to affected regions was also difficult. Yesterday, some 10,000 peoples in Gonaives had been given food, hygiene kits and water.

Turning to the situation in Cuba, Ms. Byrs said that the damage in the country amounted to US$ 3 to 4 billion. Giving some background, she noted that, in the period from 2000 to 2008, diverse natural disasters had destroyed a total of 102,000 dwellings, while Hurricane Gustav alone had left a total of 90,000 homes destroyed in a few hours. The latest reports indicated that more than 140,000 homes and public buildings had sustained damages. Several countries had already offered assistance to Cuba and on 4 September two Russian aid cargo planes had arrived in Havana, with two other aircraft carrying supplies expected shortly. On 5 September, an aircraft from Spain had also arrived.

Véronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that it was estimated that almost half (46 per cent) of the 800,000 affected persons in Haiti were children. The whole island had been affected by the successive passages of the Hurricanes, each aggravating the situation even more. A UNICEF team had flown over Gonaives by helicopter to assess the extent of the damages. Half of the population of that city was believed to be in hard-to-access areas. Relief material was currently being shipped from UNICEF’s warehouse in Copenhagen. Aid was also being shipped to the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica.

Jean Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that the IOM had resumed its distribution of non-food items in Gonaives on Monday in temporary shelters, which were located on higher ground. Shelters in the lower part of the town had remained inaccessible on Sunday. A first consignment off 50 tons of aid, donated by the United States, was currently being distributed. Stocks were now empty and financial help was needed. IOM would call for $14 million in order to continue its relief work operations.

Crash of Humanitarian Plane in Democratic Republic of the Congo

Ms. Byrs said that the United Nations and international non-governmental organizations would pay a last tribute to their colleagues who had died in an air crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 1 September during a solemn ceremony in Kinshasa in the presence of Olav Kjorven, Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Catherine Bragg, Assistant Coordinator at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ross Mountain, the Humanitarian Coordinator and Resident Representative of the United Nations for Development in the Democratic Republic of Congo had paid tribute to the sacrifice of all humanitarian an development workers who, every day, where taking real risks on planes, on the road, by boat, on motorcycle or even on foot, to help the Congolese population. He also honoured the memory of all the Congolese and international personnel who had paid with their lives during their missions, helping those who were suffering.

The remains of the OCHA collaborator would arrive tomorrow morning in Lyon, France. A ceremony would take place at the Eglise de la Rédemption on Friday, Ms. Byrs added.

Floods in Pakistan

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that some 423,000 people in Pakistan needed urgent health care after having been affected by recent conflicts and flooding, particularly in the region of Peshawar, Northwest Frontier Province and Punjab Province. Many, fleeing from either the hostilities or the flood, urgently needed aid. Hundreds of people were being forced into cramped, temporary housing. Outbreaks of communicable diseases, including acute watery diarrhoea, respiratory infections and various water- and vector-borne diseases were at high risk. Further, with malaria season starting, the risk of a large-scale outbreak of malaria were high. Outbreaks of measles, one of the major killers of children, were also possible.

WHO and its partners, including UNICEF, were requesting $9 million to start life-saving health responses, Ms. Chaib said. A $5.5 million package of the Humanitarian Response Plan was planned to help WHO to coordinate health interventions, offer primary health care, monitor disease outbreaks, asses the local health services and to improve water quality. The rest of the funds were needed for WHO’s health cluster partners.

Other

Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that the High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, had addressed a Ministerial Conference on the European Union Asylum policy yesterday in Paris. where he had pled for a coherent, consistent and effective asylum policy.

In the Gulf of Aden, smuggling from the Horn of Africa across the Gulf had resumed in August, with the onset of calmer weather, Mr. Redmond said, when 59 boats had brought more than 1,700 people to the Yemeni coast. That was nearly triple the number of arrivals for August 2007, when 633 people had landed in 10 boats. Smuggling normally subsided between May and September because of stormy weather. Twelve people on one boat had died at the end of August, eight of them after jumping into the sea when a gun battle had erupted between the Yemeni military and smugglers near the coast. Four others had died during the voyage across the Gulf of Aden, which survivors said had been incredibly difficult due to high winds and rough seas. So far this year, at least 24,269 people had made the perilous Gulf of Aden crossing aboard smugglers' boats. More than 177 people had died, and 225 people remained missing. At the same time last year, there had been 9,153 arrivals, 267 dead and 118 missing.

Responding to a journalist’s query as to why the number of those crossing had risen so much since last year, Mr. Redmond said that there was several reasons for this, one of which was the fact that there were more and more smugglers and new routes had also been opened. UNHCR and other partners were working on both sides of the Gulf to carry out the message that this was an extremely dangerous undertaking.

Florian Westphal of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said ICRC were concerned over the situation in Sri Lanka, especially the continuous displacement of civilians in the Vanni, the mainly Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)-controlled area in northern Sri Lanka. Tens of thousands of people had had to flee intense fighting between the government forces and the LTTE. Their main needs were clean water and sanitation and possibly also shelter. Some might have had no access to any humanitarian aid. The ICRC had stepped up activities in the Vanni to meet the needs of the displaced and had called for both sides to spare civilians.

Turning to Georgia, Mr. Westphal said that the ICRC continued to work in a number of villages that were in the Russian-controlled buffer zone, between Gori and Tskhinvali. They had two mobile medical units working to help some of the people in those villages. They were also helping to reunite families.

Ms. Chaib said that tomorrow, 10 September 2008, would be World Suicide Prevention Day 2008. That was not a WHO initiative, but WHO were partnering with the International Association for Suicide Prevention in order to prevent suicide. About 1 million people committed suicide each year. Most suicides in the world were occurring in Asia, especially in China, India and Japan. For every person whose suicide attempt was fatal, 20 or more might survive. The impact of suicide was devastating for friends and families. Every 40 seconds, one person died of suicide in the world. Even though suicide was taboo and stigmatized in several societies, there was a growing awareness of suicide as a major public health problem. WHO was thus working with its partners towards preventing the stigmatization of suicide and to prevent it through adequate means.

Teresa Buerkle of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that FAO was helping Morocco to deal with an outbreak of peste-des-petits-ruminants virus (ovine rinderpest or, literally, small ruminants pest), which threatened to kill millions of sheep and goats and could possibly spread to neighbouring countries. The outbreak had largely confined itself to sheep, with 133 outbreaks in 29 provinces so far. Peste-des-petits-ruminants was viral and a very contagious disease of domestic goats, sheep and wild small ruminants. These animals played an important role in supporting the livelihoods of millions of families. This was the first ever occurrence of the disease in Morocco, which indicated that the virus had now crossed the natural barrier of the Sahara and posed a risk to Northern Africa. FAO had fielded a mission in mid-August and the team had assisted with the establishment of urgent measures to control and limit the spread of the disease.

Responding to the question whether there was a risk that the disease could spread to Spain and Europe, Ms. Buerkle said that there was a concern with southern European countries because of the close trade relationships with Morocco and that was why they were acting quickly to contain the disease.

Ms. Taveau said that UNICEF and the non-governmental organization V-Day (“Until the Violence Stops”) were organizing their second year of campaigns with several partners. The campaign was aimed towards stopping the rape and torture of women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Two events would take place under the theme: ”Women Breaking the Silence” on 12 September in Goma and on 19 September in Bukavu, when women would for the first time tell their stories of rape and sexual violence to a public audience.

Towards the end of the briefing, Yvon Edoumou of OHCHR announced that he was leaving his post to work for OCHA in Western Africa, and Emilia Casella introduced herself as the new WFP Spokesperson.