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 attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Organization for Migration.
Secretary-General Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, had arrived yesterday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, accompanied by former United States President Bill Clinton and a potential of investors as well as humanitarian actors. The 24 hours visit is designed to focus international attention on Haiti’s recovery and reconstruction needs.
This visit followed the actions undertaken by the Secretary-General to support the efforts of Haitian President René Préval and the Haitian Government to reinforce stability and to put in place a permanent process allowing to secure economic security for the Haitian people. These efforts were also aimed towards the creation of jobs, food security, the improvement of the environment and providing basic services, including health and education, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier.
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that Mr. Ban Ki-Moon in his report to the Security Council on resolution 1701, which was published this Monday, noted that the current calm between Lebanon and Israel, where the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was currently operating, was still precarious, as showed by the recent incidents that had happened in this zone during the recent hostilities in Gaza this January.
Despite these grave incidents, the Secretary-General said that he was pleased that all parties were still respecting resolution 1701, as shown by the measures that had been taken by all parties to avoid an escalation. The resolution’s mechanisms had served as an effective deterrent and had prevented an escalation of the situation in southern Lebanon. These incidents also highlighted the precarious nature of the current cessation of hostilities and the necessity for both parties to take further steps to address a number of unresolved issues, with a view towards achieving a permanent solution between the two countries he added, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier.
Geneva Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that on Wednesday 11 March 2009, the Director-General, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze would meet with Heads of United Nations Funds, Programmes and Agencies, and other intergovernmental organizations, to discuss issues of common concern. The meeting forms part of the Director-General's regular exchanges with Executive Heads of the United Nations system and other intergovernmental organizations.
Further, the Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Ms. Margareta Wahlstrom, would brief the press about the main coming United Nations International Strategy for Disaster reduction events on Thursday 12 March 2009 at 10:30 a.m. in Press Room I, said Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier.
Human Rights Council Tenth Session
Rolando Gomez of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the Human Rights Council was continuing today its interactive discussions, which it had begun yesterday, with the Experts on the right to food, adequate housing and safe drinking water. Next on the programme was an interactive discussion with the Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights while countering terrorism, Mr. Martin Scheinin, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Mr. Manfred Nowak and the Chairperson of the Working Group on enforced and involuntary disappearances, Ms. Santiago Corcuera.
Also today, a special event was taking place on secret detentions, aimed at discussing the practice of permission of secret detentions to operate on the territories of States, taking into account domestic, regional and global efforts to counter-terrorism. A press conference would be held with the speakers of this event at Room XXIV between 2:30 p.m. and 3 p.m, said Mr. Gomez. A study would also be undertaken on this subject and its results should be presented to the Human Rights Council in March 2010.
Further, if time permitted, the Human Rights Council would listen, this afternoon, to the presentations by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion, and the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, said Mr. Gomez. Also tomorrow a special annual day dedicated to the rights of the child would take place. This annual event was the result of a Human Rights Council resolution that had been adopted last March to highlight the Convention of the Rights of the Child, and the rights of the child in general. In this context, a special event would also take place for the launch of a new family-friendly, multilingual, website called “CyberDodo” (www.cyberdodo.com). The website was aimed at promoting children’s rights.
Situation in the Sudan
Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reminded that on 4 March 2009 the Government of Sudan had announced the expulsion of 13 international non-governmental organizations and the termination of three non-governmental organizations. Those 16 organizations employed nearly 40 percent of the aid workers in Darfur (6,500 national and international workers). The total number of humanitarian staff affected by the Government’s decision from all of northern Sudan, including Darfur, was 7,610.
The gap created by these expulsions would be extremely difficult to bridge. It was now important to find solutions and to adapt contingency plans to address this gap. As the rainy season was now coming up, and as the country would soon be split in two due to the rains, it was urgent and essential to pre-position food and non-food assistance in the warehouses as rapidly as possible. The expelled non-governmental organizations had been logistics and emergency shelter sector partners. The loss of their services immediately threatened support to the displaced population, said Ms. Byrs.
Despite assurances given by the Sudanese Government that harassment and seizure of assets would stop, such reports continued to be received daily, said Ms. Byrs. Crucial assets had been confiscated from these humanitarian organizations, including computers, vehicles and communications equipment, as well as essential data. Further, the United Nations and the Sudanese Government had agreed on 8 March 2009 that three joint UN-Sudanese Government teams, composed of experts from both sides would visit Darfur to conduct an assessment of critical short-term needs in four sectors: Food, Nutrition, Water, and Emergency Shelter.
Véronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said that the lead-clusters they were in charge of in Darfur were the water and sanitation cluster as well as the education cluster. The suspension of operation of the 16 non-governmental organizations would have serious consequences and would affect humanitarian assistance as well as on running development programmes in northern Sudan and could have serious consequences on the progress that had been achieved in the past months, notably those concerning severe and moderate malnutrition of children of less than five years in Darfur.
Some 1.5 million people were at risk in terms of health. An estimated 1.2 million people (including 1 million in Darfur) risked having no more access to potable water and education and hygiene programmes in the weeks to come. The rainy and flooding season was coming up. The non-governmental organizations would have had normally pre-positioned the necessary material to prepare for this situation by now. Hygiene and care education programmes should have also been running by now. Their lack could be critical, said Ms. Taveau. In the past two years there had been no cholera peak in Darfur, thanks to the enormous work accomplished by the non-governmental organizations. The work that was accomplished in the last years might be rapidly swept away due to the absence of these non-governmental organizations.
Even though UNICEF were currently working 24 hours a day with their UN partners and their technical partners in the various ministries, theycould not level the lack created by the absence of the various non-governmental organizations. UNICEF was also particularly concerned by the impact this absence would have in the coming weeks and months, said Ms. Taveau. Treatment programmes for an expected 6,000 children for severe and moderate malnutrition could be interrupted. Education could be disrupted for an estimated 296,000 children, when the school year begins in April. UNICEF urged the Government of Sudan to reinstate the operational status of the 16 non-governmental organizations, so that these could operate again in Darfur and resume their activities and humanitarian operations, which were crucial for the survival and assistance of the displaced population.
Emilia Casella, of the World Food Programme, said that four of the expelled non-governmental organizations, namely CARE International, Save The Children US, Action Contre La Faim and Soliarités were crucial WFP partners. They were providing 35 percent of their food distribution capacity in Darfur. They had been distributing food to 1.1 million people plus 5,500 malnourished children and mothers receiving supplementary feeding in Darfur. WFP and other humanitarian agencies did not have the capacity to fill such a large gap. In the long term, WFP could not carry out the distributions that their four partners were undertaking in more than 130 locations in Darfur.
Unless non-governmental organizations could operate normally, people would go hungry, thirsty and growing numbers of sick and malnourished would go untreated. WFP was joining its sister agencies and partners urging the government of Sudan to rescind its decision in view of the potential grave impact on millions of vulnerable people in Darfur and elsewhere in northern Sudan. WFP was doing everything it could to respond to the urgent needs in the areas where the non-governmental organizations had been forced to leave. But within a period of two weeks 1.1 million people in Darfur would be in need food assistance, said Ms. Casella.
WFP was planning a one-off distribution of enough food for two months through local food relief committees. These committees had already been established within the camps and they had previously assisted under normal distribution. But monitoring could be difficult and gaps in distribution might occur, noted Ms. Casella. Such a short-term emergency response was really unsustainable in the long term.
Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said that they also continued to be concerned over the absence of these non-governmental organizations in Darfur. WHO was part of the joint UN/Government assessment missions that were expected to arrive in Darfur this Wednesday to evaluate the needs on the ground. Two WHO experts had left Cairo to Khartoum today. WHO was also convening a meeting in Geneva on Wednesday 11 March with its health cluster partners, non-governmental organizations, and the UN to discuss how they could carry on their activities in Sudan, despite the absence of these organization, and how they could try to fill in some of the gaps left by their departure.
Turning to the situation on the ground, Ms. Chaib said that more than 1.5 million persons would no longer have access to primary healthcare with the absence of these non-governmental organizations. Some of these organizations were often the only partners present in some parts of the country. Their absence would be highly felt on several programmes: immunizations would be disrupted and the communicable disease early warning alert and response system would be interrupted. This surveillance relied heavily on the presence of the now expelled NGOs in a number of camps. This situation would increase the risk of disease outbreaks and higher rates of mortality and morbidity. Further, an outbreak of meningitis had been reported in the Kalma Camp which currently hosts 89 000 people and the non-governmental organizations had been part of an immunization in the camp.
Diarrhoeal Diseases
Jean-Luc Martinage of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said that the IFRC was warning that diarrhoeal diseases were increasingly becoming the major cause of recurring diseases and death throughout the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Statistics of the IFRC Disaster Response Emergency Fund showed an increase of 35 percent, in the last two years, in requests for allocations support related to outbreaks of acute diarrhoeal diseases.
Robert Fraser Senior Water and Sanitation Officer, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said that they had been mapping with increasing concern, particularly over the last three years, the trend of increasing diarrheal diseases outbreaks and cholera, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. They saw this as a result of several key issues, one being the increasing and rapid urbanization, particularly in countries where services, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion were poor, combined with the erosion of health and care support services from governments and added to the increasing impact of climate change, particularly the increasing severity of floods, food security issues and droughts.
All these factors together and exacerbated by those countries that had instability and conflict meant that the IFRC had an increase in number of demands to respond to diarrhoeal disease outbreaks, including cholera, said Mr. Fraser. Many outbreaks were happening now in countries or areas that previously had not had this problem. The IFRC wanted to scale up its capacity to be prepared for these increasing outbreaks, to be better prepared for responding a national grassroots and regional and global level and to promote further the importance of household water treatment and hygiene promotion as key low-cost and easier to implement elements.
Migration
Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said that tomorrow they would formally launch in South Africa the “One Movement”, which was addressing rising issues of xenophobia and discrimination in the country. This would be under the patronage of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As part of the launch, they would also release a report which tried to identify the root causes of the xenophobic attacks that had occurred in May 2008 in South Africa.
UNCTAD
Catherine Sibut-Pinote of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that today they would publish a summary note on official development assistance. It was known that during a financial crisis, official development assistance was being reduced. During the last crisis, drops of 20 to 40 percent in development assistance had been registered. It was necessary to propose solutions to meet the demands of a number of developing countries, which relied on official development assistance and also to ensure that they would not have left ground in the post-crisis period in terms of production.
Also today an Expert meeting on mainstreaming gender in trade policy had started this morning. The effects of globalization and trade liberalization had different controversial effects on women and men, depending on the region and the country. The Experts would discuss experiences and lessons-learned, as well as relevant strategies to make trade policies more responsive to gender considerations, said Ms. Sibut-Pinote.
UNECE Countries in Figures 2009
Jean Rodriguez of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe said that they were launching today their “UNECE Countries in Figures 2009” publication. This booklet provided a one-page overview of the 56 member countries of the UNECE. Profiles included key facts and a map of each country, demographic data and indicators of gender equality, employment, national accounts, prices, trade and transport. The “UNECE Countries in Figures” was being published every two years but the data were being constantly updated and available on-line through: http://www.unece.org/stats/data.htm.