REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Children's Fund.

Activities in New York

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the High-level Meeting on Disarmament convened by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on revitalizing the work of the Conference on Disarmament and taking forward multilateral disarmament negotiations would take place today in New York. The meeting would be webcast live.

Also today, there would be a High-level Review Meeting on the implementation of the Mauritius strategy for the Further Implementation of the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, said Ms. Momal-Vanian.

Human Rights Council

Claire Kaplun of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that there had been some changes in the programme of work of the Human Rights Council. Monday morning the meeting would start at 10 a.m. and would start with the presentation of the report of the United Nations Committee of Independent Experts monitoring and assessing investigations into serious violation of International Humanitarian and Human Right Law during the Gaza conflict of December 2008 to January 2009. The meeting should end around 1 p.m.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that on Monday, 27 September at 3:30 p.m. there would be a press conference by the United Nations Committee of Independent Experts monitoring and assessing investigations into serious violation of International Humanitarian and Human Right Law during the Gaza conflict of December 2008 to January 2009. The speaker would be Christian Tomuschat, Professor Emeritus at Humboldt University, Berlin and Chair of the Committee.

Also on Monday, the Council would hear the presentation of the International Fact-finding Mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance, said Ms. Kaplun. This should happen around 4 p.m. and the general discussion would continue into Tuesday. The Fact-finding mission would give a press conference on Tuesday at 2 p.m.

Committee on the Rights of the Child

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Committee on the Rights of the Child was concluding today this morning its consideration of the reports of Sri Lanka and Nicaragua that were presented yesterday. These were the last two country reports to be considered at the current session that would end next week. The Committee next week would hold private meetings to draft its concluding observations on the ten reports it has considered at the current session.

Investigations into DRC Mass Rapes

Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was publishing today the preliminary results of an investigation into the horrifying series of mass rapes and other human rights violations that had been committed by three armed groups in the Walikale region at the end of July and beginning of August this year.

The United Nations Joint Human Rights Office was a joint office of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) and was embedded within MONUSCO, said Mr. Colville.

Mr. Colville said that there had been an initial mission by a MONUSCO joint protection team in mid-August and that the team from the UN Joint Human Rights Office had followed-up with its own investigation. It had visited 13 affected villages and had carried out an in-depth investigation into what had happened.

The 15-page report was a preliminary document, said Mr. Colville. It confirmed that at least 303 civilians had been raped, in many cases multiple times and by multiple attackers. The known victims included 235 women, 52 girls, 13 men, and 3 boys. More than 923 houses and 42 shops had been looted and 116 people had been abducted in order to carry out forced labour.

Mr. Colville stressed that the total number of victims might well be higher, as attacks had still been taking place in the area, while the investigating team had been in the villages. The attacks had prevented the team to complete its investigation in six of the 13 villages. Also, around half the population of the affected villages, possibly including more rape victims, had still been hiding in the forest.

In addition to the mass rapes in the Walikale covered in the report, other rapes have been tacking place in the region during the month of August. An alleged further 214 cases of rape had been reported, said Mr. Colville.

The attacks had taken place mostly after dark and had been carried out over a period of four days by about 200 attackers from three groups. The attackers had initially pretended that they had come to provide security for the population, before launching attacks in small groups, said Mr. Colville. They had subsequently cut off the main routes into the area and had taken control of a key hill, which was the only place where telephone communications were possible in the area, thereby preventing the population from raising the alarm.

The report also outlined the complex background to the attack, including the history of the three groups in this area and the linkage between their presence and efforts to control and exploit nearby mineral quarries, said Mr. Colville. Both local leaders and victims, however, believed the prime motive for the attacks had been to punish and subjugate the local population whom the attackers viewed as “traitors”.

The report also pointed to serious shortcomings in the preparedness and response of the local detachments of the Congolese army and the police stationed in the area, said Mr. Colville. It also noted that their failure to prevent or stop the attacks had been compounded by subsequent failings on the part of MONUSCO forces. The report also made a number of recommendations to the various actors.

Situation in Pakistan

Jared Bloch of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that IOM's trucking operations to deliver emergency shelter and aid to the victims of the worst floods in Pakistan's history were rapidly expanding with the help of local partners, but they still fell far short of the desperate needs, particularly in the south of the country.

IOM had now handled incoming in-kind donations, warehousing and onward transportation of relief goods from 33 aid flights from USAID, the United Kingdom Government, the United Nations, the European Union and Americares, said Mr. Bloch.

IOM was currently trucking emergency shelter and non food relief items to hubs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab and immediately distributing them from hub warehouses to flood victims, in close cooperation with the local authorities, and with the help of local and international non-governmental organisations implementing partners, said Mr. Bloch.

IOM was also directly supporting the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Pakistan's lead disaster response agency, by helping it to hire an additional 45 staff member, including sectoral experts, to support the flood response, said Mr. Bloch. These included logistics, data entry, communications and support staff. IOM was also helping the NDMA with procurement.

With more aid reaching flood-affected areas, coordination between agencies distributing shelter at provincial and district level was also improving, said Mr. Bloch. NDMA estimated that over 1.8 million houses had been damaged or destroyed by the floods. The Emergency Shelter Cluster, which was led by IOM, believed that between US$ 300 and $ 600 million would be needed over the coming months to provide emergency and transitional shelter and to start repairing people's homes.

To date some 70 shelter cluster agencies had distributed emergency shelter to about 381,000 families or over 2.67 million people, said Mr. Bloch. They had also distributed 420,000 blankets, 100,000 kitchen sets, 100,000 sleeping mats, and over 4,000 toolkits. Another 295,000 plastic sheets, 77,300 tents, 460,000 blankets, 92,000 kitchen sets and 3,000 sleeping mats were in their procurement pipeline.

Paul Garwood of the World Health Organization said that there would be a press conference today at 2 p.m. in Islamabad between the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization regarding the emergency response efforts that were ongoing inside the country. A press release would also be issued at the same time.

Yemen/Displacements

Andrej Mahecic of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that they were closely following developments in Yemen's south-east Shabwa governorate where this week's fighting between the government forces and militants had forced many Yemeni families to leave the area. UNHCR was concerned about the security and safety of the population affected by the conflict in Mayfar district and hoped that all measures had been taken to prevent casualties among civilians.

UNHCR's estimate was that the on-going clashes – which had flared up on Sunday – had so far forced at least some 4,000 Yemeni civilians to leave their homes in Al-Hawtah village and the surrounding settlements, some 400 kilometers east of Aden. Reports indicated that displacement continued to grow, said Mr. Mahecic. Most of the displaced had sought safety and shelter in the neighbouring villages. UNHCR's reception centre in Mayfa'a, where the new arrivals from the Horn of Africa were registered and temporarily sheltered, was only some 30 kilometeres away.

UNHCR's local non-governmental organisation partner had managed to reach Al-Azzem village on Tuesday and had reported that displaced people were sheltering with host families, said Mr. Mahecic. According to initial reports, some of the displaced were in urgent need of food, medical supplies and shelter. The local authorities had opened the village school, which was now accommodating some 60 people.

As part of the UN team in Yemen, UNHCR remained in close contact with the authorities – which had already begun to distribute some aid – as well as in coordination with other humanitarian actors on ground, said Mr. Mahecic. A rapid UN assessment mission was scheduled to take place today that should allow UNHCR to get a better picture of the size of displacement and the needs.

UNHCR and other UN agencies were pre-positioning assistance for some 300 families (i.e. 2,100 people given that the average family size in Yemen was seven) in the Mafya'a reception centre. Mr. Mahecic said that UNHCR was also ready to scale up this assistance should that become necessary. They had considerable resources in the country due to the continuing refugee flow from the Horn of Africa and the internal displacement caused by last year's conflict in the north of the country.

Some 168,000 Somali refugees had been registered by UNHCR in Yemen. In addition, more than 304,000 Yemeni civilians continued to live in displacement following the seven-month conflict in northern Yemen which ended in February this year, said Mr. Mahecic.

Niger/Child Nutrition

Marixie Mercado of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), updating on the situation of the child nutrition crisis in Niger, said that as of the beginning of September, over 217,000 children had been treated for severe acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year. Almost 10,000 children had been treated each week since mid-August. The June nutritional survey had showed that the global acute malnutrition rates among children under three was 21.7 per cent, up from 10.1 per cent last year.

Ms. Mercado said that next week, UNICEF, together with the Nigerian Government, CARE and Save the Children, would begin a second round of a cash transfer programme to help families get through Niger’s so-called “hungry season” - the period when grain stores were empty and before the new crops were cut in October, after several months of severe food shortages.

This pilot programme targeted two regions - Tahoua and Tessaoua – offering 30,000 families US$ 40 a month, and worked in conjunction with a World Food Programme/United Nations Children's Fund blanket feeding programme, said Ms. Mercado.

It was the first time that UNICEF was using cash as a way to help families caught in a nutrition crisis, said Ms. Mercado. The money was distributed to women who had at least one child under two years old, together with child-specific nutritional supplies.

The rationale for the cash programme was that during the first round of blanket feeding in May 2010, the monthly rations for children had only lasted a few days because they were being shared by families whose food stocks had been depleted, said Ms. Mercado. Beginning in August, rations for children had been supplemented with a food ration for the family, along with the cash.

Migration

Jared Bloch of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that IOM was participating in the second Latin American Congress on Migrant Smuggling and Human Trafficking, taking place this week in Puebla, Mexico.

The main objective of the Congress was to promote active discussion amongst key actors combating human trafficking in Latin America, in order to encourage the development of public policies and legislation against trafficking in the region, said Mr. Bloch.

Speaking on another item, Mr. Bloch said that a group of 31 Asia-Pacific nations had agreed to a regional agenda to take to the November meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development. Some of the key recommendations coming out of that meeting included looking at strategies into national development plans and poverty reduction strategies; underlining the need for further development of bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the area of migration management; and specifically calling for efforts to mainstream labour, migration, population and development policies which respected international labour standards and protected the rights of all migrant workers, particularly women and children, and also promoted an end to stigmatization and discrimination against migrants.

Third H1N1 Review Meeting

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said that the International Health Regulations Review Committee would hold its third meeting from 27 to 29 September 2010 at the World Health Organization’s Executive Council Room.

Gregory Hartl of the World Health Organization specified that the sessions on Monday, Tuesday morning and on Wednesday afternoon were open to the media.

Answering a journalist’s question on what the Review Committee would be discussing at this meeting, Mr. Hartl said that it was still asking for inputs form various stakeholders, including from World Health Organization staff itself. It would then retire into a session where it would analyze what these inputs meant and it would start the process of writing the report.

UNIS on Web 2.0

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Information Service had issued a press release yesterday evening announcing the launch of its enhanced web presence to provide multi-media information to people interested in the work of the United Nations Office at Geneva. The additional outlets included a Facebook page, a Youtube Channel, a Flick Account and a Twitter feed.

Agenda

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that on Tuesday, 28 September WHO would launch, together with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UNAIDS, a report entitled: "Towards Universal Access - Scaling up priority HIV/AIDS interventions in the health sector - Progress Report 2010". The press conference would take place in Press Room III at 11:30 a.m. with speakers from WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS and the Global Fund.