REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States on the Syrian crisis, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Organization for Migration and the UN Refugee Agency.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the Committee on Enforced Disappearances was today concluding its second session, which started on Monday, 26 March. The round-up would be sent out at the end of the day.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People would be convening the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine on 3 and 4 April 2012. The theme of the Meeting was “The question of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention facilities: legal and political implications.” The background press release had been sent out on Wednesday, 28 March. There would be a press conference about this meeting on Tuesday, 3 April.

There would also be a press conference today at 11.30 a.m. on UNCTAD XIII. Speaking would be Taffere Tesfachew, Spokesperson for UNCTAD XIII who had spoken to journalists at the last briefing.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said once again this year, the United Nations would join the Earth Hour initiative and would switch off all non-essential lighting at Headquarters and other offices, including UNOG, on Saturday, 31 March. 2012 was the third year that the United Nations would participate in the initiative which was sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. The United Nations Office at Geneva was calling on all its personnel, as well as journalists, to switch off all lights and computers tonight before going home.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for World Autism Awareness Day, to be commemorated on 2 April, was available at the back of the room. In his message, Secretary-General Ban said that although developmental disabilities such as autism began in childhood, they persisted throughout a person’s life. Reaching out to people with autism spectrum disorders required global political commitment and better international cooperation, especially in sharing good practices. The annual observance of World Autism Awareness Day was meant to spur such action and draw attention to the unacceptable discrimination, abuse and isolation experienced by people with autism and their loved ones. Ms. Momal-Vanian said that this was a subject not usually raised in Europe and she encouraged journalists to look into it.

Two notes prepared by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, one on the situation in the Sahel and the other on cholera in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were available at the back of the room.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said the World Trade Organization had asked her to read out an announcement: WTO was releasing its first statistical overview of international trade in 2011 and its latest projections for world trade in 2012 on Thursday, 12 April. The press release would be available at 12 noon on 12 April, when a press conference would be given in room D at WTO by Director-General Pascal Lamy and other officials. Journalists would be able to receive advance copies at 11 a.m. in room D, under embargo until noon. They would have to remain in the room until the press conference concluded and hand in any mobile phones, laptops, and any other equipment capable of electronic communication.

World Health Day 2012

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said available at the back of the room were documents concerning World Health Day 2012 (7 April), which would be commemorated on Wednesday, 4 April. The theme this year was ageing and health. Available was the programme for the commemoration, including a roundtable to be held from 10 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. with the participation of Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, and Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, and a number of other dignitaries. There would also be a personal testimony by Mirtha Nordet, a retired ophthalmologist who was pictured in the World Health Day poster doing a bungee dive. At 11:45 a.m. and for half an hour, there would be a short press conference with Dr. Chan and a number of other speakers who would talk about what WHO was doing in the context of elderly persons. There was no embargo on the documents, and there were other documents on the website.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights/ Barbados/ Chile

Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said a media advisory was sent out early about the High Commissioner’s visit to Barbados starting Tuesday, 3 April. This would be the first ever visit by any United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to the English-speaking Caribbean States.

Regarding Chile, he wanted to talk about a particularly abhorrent murder of a 24 year-old gay man, Daniel Zamudio, who died on Tuesday, 27 March, 25 days after being viciously assaulted by a group of alleged neo-Nazis in a Santiago park. He was reportedly tortured for an hour by his attackers, who stubbed cigarettes out on him, carved swastikas into his body, and mutilated him in other ways. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights deplored the violent criminal act that took the life of this young man and urged the Chilean Congress to pass a law against discrimination, including on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, in full compliance with relevant international human rights standards. The Office also urged Chile to enact hate crime legislation that established hatred based on various grounds, including sexual orientation and gender identity, as an aggravating factor for the purposes of criminal prosecution. The incident had sparked a public outcry in Chile, with hundreds joining vigils outside the hospital where Mr. Zamudio was taken after the attack. It had also provoked a debate about homophobia and hate crimes and calls for Parliament to pass an anti-discrimination law, which was currently before the Chilean Parliament, awaiting approval by the lower House. The bill was initially presented in Parliament in 2005 and had undergone much debate and reformulation. The Government was now trying to push it through and OHCHR strongly supported that effort.

Mr. Colville said the killing of Daniel Zamudio was just the latest reminder of the gravity and prevalence of homophobic violence, not just in Chile but in many other countries. He drew the attention of journalists to OHCHR’s report recently published on this issue, the first ever by the United Nations on this subject. These kinds of attacks happened pretty much every day somewhere in the world. He would revisit this issue on Tuesday, 3 April, with a broader overview and other cases of homophobic violence from other countries.

Responding to a question, Mr. Colville said four suspects had been arrested in connection with this murder and they were expected to face murder charges. Some of those arrested apparently had criminal records for previous attacks on gay men. The Prosecutor had also said he believed that the attack on Mr. Zamudio was clearly motivated by homophobia.

In response to a question about media reports of the United Nations promising to send an investigating team to research the situation of human rights in Tibet, especially concerning the many monks who had self-immolated, Mr. Colville said there had been a hunger strike outside the United Nations in New York by three Tibetans for a long time. OHCHR had explained to them that there were requests by a considerable number of Special Rapporteurs and Working Groups – the Special Procedures of the United Nations human rights system, to visit China in general, not just Tibet. He believed that was probably what the media reports may be referring to. The fact that there were these repeated self-immolations was an indicator of serious underlying problems in the Tibetan regions of China. OHCHR was not sending any separate mission to look at these issues, but there was quite considerable engagement by the United Nations human rights system on this subject.

Mission by Kofi Annan, Special Envoy on Syria

Ahmed Fawzi, Spokesperson for Kofi Annan, Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States on the Syrian crisis, said a statement had been put out from Beijing on Tuesday, 27 March about Mr. Annan’s six-point plan, which had been accepted by the Syrian Government. He had been getting many questions about whether Mr. Annan would be going to Baghdad. Mr. Annan had not gone, but he did send his deputy, Nasser al-Kidwa. There were other questions about whether he was going to Tehran, and the answer was that they were discussing mutually convenient dates with the Iranian authorities at the moment. Mr. Annan intended to go to Tehran, but a date had not been fixed yet.

Responding to a question, Mr. Fawzi said Mr. Annan had been visiting key capitals in the region and beyond, to seek their support for his mission. He had already visited Cairo, Ankara, Doha, Beijing, Moscow, and he intended to visit Tehran in the near future as well as Riyadh to press on those governments the importance of the unity of the international community behind this plan and to stress that this was the only plan in town. It was incumbent on the Syrian authorities to implement the plan quickly and effectively, and to work with the Special Envoy to ensure that all the plan’s provisions were implemented. Mr. Annan was conscious that this could only be done if there was unity within the international community. He was grateful for the wide backing which he had received, and had appealed to key countries to support the plan and help ensure its effective implementation.

Mr. Fawzi said Mr. Annan would brief the Security Council on Monday, 2 April by video link on the latest developments. Mr. Annan had received strong support for his mediation efforts during his trips to the Russian Federation and China and he would brief the Council about that, as well as about the acceptance by the Syrian Government of his six-point plan. Yesterday, President Bachar Al Assad had said that he wanted and would do everything in his power to ensure the success of Mr. Annan’s plan. “We expect him to implement this plan immediately,” Mr. Fawzi said. Clearly they had not seen a cessation of hostilities on the ground, and this was of great concern to everyone. “We are also reaching out to the opposition because there are two parties in this crisis,” said Mr. Fawzi. Mr. Annan had sent his deputy Nasser al-Kidwa to Istanbul, where there was an opposition meeting a few days ago and a Friends of Syria meeting which would start on Sunday, 1 April. Mr. al-Kidwa had with him a team from Mr. Annan’s office to talk to the opposition, and to convey messages to the commanders of the military groups on the ground to appeal to them to lay down their arms and start talking.

Responding to another question, Mr. Fawzi said the agreement specifically asked the Government to withdraw its troops and to cease using heavy weapons in populated centres. The very clear implication was that the Government must stop first, and then discuss a cessation of hostilities with the other side and the mediator. “The deadline is now,” Mr. Fawzi said, adding that China and Russia had explicitly backed the six-point plan in its entirety. Other than the clause on cessation of hostilities, there were five other clauses that could be implemented in parallel and immediately. One of them was to give journalists freedom of access throughout the country and to provide entry visas to journalists. Another was to allow freedom of assembly and expression. A third was to release political detainees and other prisoners and to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to prisons. Another was the two-hour humanitarian corridor for two hours a day to start with. There was a lot that could be done immediately. Mr. Fawzi said it was imperative that the killing, the human rights abuses and the violence stopped.

Asked if Mr. Annan would be returning to Syria, Mr. Fawzi said that he did plan to return to Syria as soon as the time was right.

Yemen

Marixie Mercado of the United Nations Children’s Fund said tomorrow UNICEF and partner teams, including WHO, would deploy across Yemen in a bid to reach almost 8 million children below 10 years old with a measles vaccine. This nation-wide campaign came after a shocking increase of measles-related deaths. After years of no measles deaths, there had been 177 deaths and over 4,000 cases reported since mid 2011. All the deaths in 70 per cent of the cases had been among children below five years old. This huge increase of measles was representative of the damage done by the disruption of social services due to the unrest in 2011. Conflict affected areas saw immunization rates drop by as much as 60 per cent. A first vaccination was carried out earlier this month in the areas with the highest rates of infection. Early numbers showed that they had reached 90 per cent of the 1.5 million children targeted in these areas. This measles outbreak was unfolding in a potentially lethal context with levels of malnutrition in parts of the country close to rates seen in Afghanistan or Somalia. One in five children was immediately malnourished, and 59 per cent were stunted or chronically malnourished. There was also ongoing displacement with crowded conditions in camps etc. All these factors increased the risk of the epidemic spreading even more. Funding was a huge problem for Yemen right now, and UNICEF’s request for 2012 was only 14 per cent funded.

Lord’s Resistance Army / Pakistan / Joint EU Resettlement Programmes

Melissa Fleming of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees said for UNHCR the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had been the driver of almost 450,000 collectively displaced people, fleeing the absolute violence and horrendous attacks. There were updated figures on how that this group was still a force to be reckoned with. Not only was it still killing and abducting people in the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and in South Sudan, it was terrorizing the people to such an extent that they were living in fear and many were fleeing from their homes. In South Sudan, this feeling of fear and terror remained high, with the LRA conducting hit-and-run attacks.

South Sudan was preparing to host African Union Forces to coordinate a regional effort to eliminate the LRA. UNHCR welcomed the regional effort to eliminate the LRA. UNHCR welcomed the regional and international initiatives aimed at ending the LRA atrocities.

Concerning north-western Pakistan, Ms. Fleming said that there had been dramatic displacements in north-western Pakistan. Since the Government offensive security operation had started at the beginning of this year, over 100,000 people had fled, most of them women and children. The Jalozai camp was now the largest camp for internally displaced persons in Pakistan. UNHCR and other agencies were providing assistance.

Ms. Fleming said UNHCR welcomed the adoption on 29 March by the European Union of a joint resettlement programme. This was an important step towards a more substantive contribution by the European Union and its Member States to the global resettlement programme.

Outcome of Recent Assessment on Conditions of Former Chadian Migrants

Jumbe Omari Jumbe of the International Organization for Migration said that an IOM assessment of the conditions of Chadian migrants who returned from Libya had found that most were in urgent need of reintegration support in their communities. The study also found the returnees were struggling financially to provide for themselves and their families.

Because of that, the assessment had found that the level of stress among the heads of these families was very high. Since December, IOM had been providing phsyco-social care to about 11,000 of those returnees after receiving funding from the German Government. They had now received pledging for funding for the reintegration and livelihood assistance from the German Government and were planning to start assisting in reintegration through retraining and assisting in setting up small businesses.

Mr. Jumbe said the briefing notes also mentioned that IOM Director General William Lacy Swing would deliver a keynote speech during the opening ceremony of the ninth edition of the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development Conference and exhibition, a three-day event which would open on 1 April.