REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Michele Zaccheo, Chief of the Radio and Television Section, United Nations Information Service at UN Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by the spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, International Organization for Migration, World Health Organisation, International Telecommunication Union, and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Vietnam human rights defenders

Elisabeth Throssell, for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concerns about the intensifying crackdown against human rights defenders in Vietnam who had questioned or criticized the Government and its policies. On Tuesday 25 July, the well-known activist Tran Thi Nga had been sentenced to nine years imprisonment and five years house arrest for the so-called anti-state propaganda over comments posted online. The Office had serious concerns about the severity of the sentence and the conduct of the trial which did not appear to have met due process standards: Tran Thi Nga had been kept in incommunicado detention for six months since her arrest in January 2017 until a few days before the trial; she had not been allowed adequate time to prepare her defence, the trial lasted just one day and her family and friends had been denied entry into the courtroom. Ms. Tran’s sentence came less than a month after another prominent blogger, widely known as “Mother Mushroom”, had been jailed for ten years also under article 88 of the Penal Code, following similarly flawed judicial procedures.

Ms. Throssell drew the attention to the fact that over the previous six months, at least seven other human rights defenders had been arrested and faced prosecutions; several dozen had been detained and two had been deported or sent into exile abroad. Many others had been intimidated, harassed and brusquely beaten. Human rights defenders should never be treated as criminals who were a threat to national security, stressed the spokesperson and pointed that the article 88 and several other provisions of the Penal Code had been repeatedly denounced by the Office and the human rights mechanisms. The failure of the Government of Viet Nam to address the concerns of the international community about the restrictions on fundamental freedoms raised doubts about its commitment to protect and promote human rights. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had urged the Vietnamese authorities to immediately release all those detained in connection with the exercise of their right to freedom of expression and to amend the overly broad ill-defined law used to crackdown on dissent under the pretext of national security.

Asked whether the Office had been in touch with the Vietnamese authorities on the matters of the crackdown, Ms. Throssell said that the High Commissioner for Human Rights had expressed his concerns and that in October 2016 he had spoken about article 88 which he had said effectively made it a crime for any Vietnamese citizen to enjoy the fundamental freedom to express an opinion, to discuss and to question the government and its policies. The High Commissioner had also referred to the overly broad and ill-defined scope of the law. In addition, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and various human rights mechanisms including the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the special procedures had taken up the cases with the Vietnamese authorities, and they all considered those provisions as too vague and in breach of international humans rights law, and therefore amounting to criminalization of the exercise of fundamental rights. There had been no specific reaction by the Government to the concerns raised in relation to Article 88.

Answering other questions, Ms. Throssell confirmed that some journalists had been sent to exile abroad and that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was calling for the release of the two arrested bloggers.

Venezuela

Elisabeth Throssell, for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed concerns about the risk of violence in Venezuela where the elections for the Constituent Assembly convened by President Nicolas Maduro were due to be held on Sunday. The wishes of the Venezuelan people to participate or not in this election needed to be respected, she stressed, adding that no one should be obliged to vote and that those willing to take part should be able to do so freely. The Office of the High Commissioner urged the authorities to manage any protest against the Constituent Assembly in line with international human rights norms and standards, and expressed concern that the demonstrations that the authorities saw as disturbing the elections had been banned from 28 July to 1 August 2017.

Ms. Throssell called upon those opposing the elections to do so peacefully and hoped that the poll scheduled for Sunday would proceeded peacefully and in full respect of human rights. To that end, the Office renewed their appeal to the authorities to guarantee people’s rights to freedom of expression, associations and peaceful assembly and called on all those in Venezuela to use peaceful means to make themselves heard.

Responding to questions raised, Ms. Throssell explained that the Office was trying to talk to the widest spectrum of people possible, including non-governmental organizations, and that it was a constant process of dialogue and search for information. The situation in the country was very tense and difficult, which explained the concerns raised. Demonstrations had been banned from 28 July to 1 August, and the Office of the High Commissioner repeatedly called on the Government to guarantee the freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Given the hugely tense situation in Venezuela, the Office reiterated the call for calm and for peaceful protests and for all sides to use only peaceful means to make their views heard.

With regard to the legitimacy of the vote itself, the spokesperson noted that it was a hugely controversial issue amplified by the fact that there had been an unofficial consultation by the opposition on the constituent assembly. The Office was concerned about the environment in which those elections were to take place and it believed that a constitutional process could only be successful if based on a broad consensus and the participation of all sectors of society. Ms. Throssell reminded the journalists that the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe advisory on the constitutional matters, had issued its opinion on the legal issues raised by these elections on 21 July, in which it had concluded that the procedure and the electoral rules of that election contradicted the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recognized the Venice Commission’s expertise on constitutional matters. The Office was concerned about the environment in which the elections were due to take place, said the spokesperson and concluded by stressing that right conditions were required for a constitutional change, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of peaceful assembly.

Syria

Jens Laerke, for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that in her briefing to the Security Council on 27 July on the situation in Syria, Ms. Ursula Mueller, Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator had noted a reduction of violence, particularly in Daraa governorate in the last weeks, and the resumption of military operations in the besieged area of eastern Ghouta in rural Damascus and infighting between non-State armed groups in Idlib which had led to civilian casualties and increased tensions on the ground. The crucial Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing, a lifeline for the humanitarian aid from Turkey into then-west Syria, had reopened for humanitarian and commercial cargo after it had been closed for a week by the Turkish authorities due to the fighting between non-State armed groups on the Syrian side of the border.

In her briefing, Ms. Mueller had expressed concern for the protection of the 200,000 people displaced in Raqqa governorate since 1 April; among those some 30,000 had been displaced during this month alone, due to the military operations against the Islamic State in Raqqa. The United Nations and its humanitarian partners were already responding to protect those people and were ready to provide support to people in Raqqa city itself, as soon as access and security conditions allowed. OCHA estimated that between 20,000 and 50,000 people remained in Raqqa city which was now encircled; civilians couldn’t safely leave the city because of mines, shelling, sniper attacks and airstrikes and there were concerns that the Islamic State was using civilians as a human shield. Humanitarian deliveries to besieged and hard-to-reach areas in Syria were currently at a low point, as no United Nations- coordinated inter-agency convoy had reached any besieged area in July, although airdrops to Deir ez-Zor continued.

Deliveries to hard-to-reach areas were down to an average of one per week in July; in total, under the United Nation’s June-July convoy plan, only over a third of the one million people targeted had been reached. In total, there were some 540,000 people in 11 besieged locations across Syria and approximately four million people in hard-to-reach areas. Finally, Ms. Muller had highlighted that the Security Council’s Resolution 2165, which had opened the United Nations cross border deliveries into Syria, was now at a three-year mark; during this period, over 15,000 trucks had been monitored by the United Nations monitoring mechanism and sent across the border to provide aid to people in need. This way of delivering aid must be preserved in the months ahead, stressed the Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs.

In response to questions about the polio vaccination campaign in Raqqa, Mr. Laerke said that in her briefing yesterday to the United Nations Security Council, Ms. Muller had mentioned the start of the polio vaccination campaign by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund and other health partners which was targeting 450,000 people in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa.

Tarik Jašareviæ, for the World Health Organisation confirmed that the first round of polio vaccination had started on 22 July in Deir ez-Zor; close to 60,000 children had been vaccinated on the first day. The first round would be soon completed, and the second round would follow when everyone had been vaccinated. The campaign had not started yet in Raqqa, vaccines were currently in Qamishli where they had been moved from Damascus on 18 July. The community acceptance was high, especially in the Subahan area, which was the epicentre of this vaccine-derived polio type 2 outbreak, during which 27 cases had been confirmed to date; of those, 26 were from Deir ez-Zor and one from the Raqqa Governorate. No new cases had been reported last week, said Mr. Jašareviæ.

Mr. Laerke confirmed that 450,000 children were targeted by the vaccination campaign in the two areas, and Mr. Jašareviæ clarified that 328,000 children were in Deir ez-Zor and 120,000 in Raqqa.

The security situation was such that it called for an opportunistic approach in accessing the areas, said the spokesperson for the World Health Organization, which meant that right now it was not possible to say when the second round would take place.

Asked why there had been no distribution in hard-to-reach and besieged areas, Mr. Laerke explained that there had been no inter-agency convoys in the besieged areas in July and that the number of convoys to hard-to-reach areas had dropped to an average of one a week. Only one third of the planned areas had been reached in June-July, due a lack of conditions which would allow for deliveries to take place. Obstacles to convoys proceeding as planned were almost predictable - lack of approvals, lack of facilitation by the Government of Syria, other administrative delays, as well as insecurity and fighting. There were also arbitrary restrictions by some non-State armed groups, some terrorist groups, and by self-designated authorities which continued to restrict access, especially in Idlib and in the Eastern Governorates of Syria. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people who were desperately in need of aid, and which the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the partners was ready to provide, were not receiving it.

Responding to questions concerning the vaccination of children in the Islamic State-held areas, Mr. Jašareviæ noted that it was not clear at the moment who controlled the epicentre of the outbreak and confirmed that the World Health Organization and the partners tried to reach all children who were in need and in that, they worked with all the providers of humanitarian and medical assistance on the grounds, as had been done in 2013 and 2014 when an outbreak of the wild polio had been successfully stopped.

All partners were doing their best and the first round of vaccinations had started in Deir ez-Zor; the World Health Organization worked with everyone and, as had been the case since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria, it had a network of focal points and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) throughout the territory. It had agreements with 60 NGOs all over the country, and it worked with all those who provided medical services and assistance. The vaccinations had started and it was hoped that the outbreak would be stopped - even though the vaccine-derived polio type 2 was not as virulent as the wild polio, it still paralyzed the children.

With regards to the details of how the vaccination campaign was being implemented in the field, including among internally displaced population, Mr. Jašareviæ explained that the World Health Organisation was looking into finding the best ways to implement the campaign in the current security situation, and that it was using a network of people and organizations it had been working with before. Only one case had been confirmed in the Raqqa Governorate, but the decision had been made, for preventive reason, to vaccinate 120,000 children under the age of five. Full briefing on the campaign, including on the number of vaccinators in the field, would be provided at the end of the campaign.

Mosul, Iraq

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration, said that the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) was counting almost 840,000 individuals displaced in the fighting to retake the northern Iraqi city of Mosul; 234, 594 individuals had already returned to their homes and 80 per cent of them were going back to their districts of origin in East Mosul. The DTM had reached over a million people since the start of the emergency in Mosul in October, which for a city of 1.4 million was quite remarkable.

During the week, the International Organization for Migration had sent a team to an emergency hospital constructed with the assistance of the United Kingdom Department for International Development; since its opening in April 2017, the hospital had done 476 trauma and 22 non-trauma emergency operations, or five hundred in just over four months, at the rate of three operations per day, which was a very busy schedule. Mr. Millman drew the journalists’ attention to a link in the press release, to a video prepared on the hospital’s bedsides of three people (a ten-year old girl, a 35 year old mother and a 25 years old single woman) describing what they saw in the retaking of Mosul and some of the traumatic things that happened to their families. It was not pleasant but still was remarkable footage. Journalists were free to use it on their websites or broadcast it as it was a document capturing the situation of Mosul.

Deaths of migrants in transit

Mr. Millman turned to the migratory flows and noted that talking about the situation in the Mediterranean had become a routine over the last four years, but that much less attention was being given to the situation in Mexico, which at this moment had a particularly bad week. Presenting the migrants’ statistics, Mr. Millman noted that the number of fatalities was up by 83 compared to last week (from 3,282 to 3,355) and at least 70 of those ware in Mexico. Eight people had been found suffocated to death in a trailer in San Antonio, Texas and the number of casualties had grown to eleven since then, with three people succumbing to death in the hospital due to dehydration. There was a fifth victim of a mass drowning in El Paso, and it appeared that two people were still missing from that incident: it was unsure whether they had crossed back to Mexico or had made it into the United States. Other victims came from the drownings in the Rio Bravo and a train accident in Chiapas earlier in the week - it had been a deadly summer of the Mexico-United States border so far in 2017, and summer was not even halfway.

Asked whether the situation for migrants coming in into the United States had become more dangerous since the onerous Trump immigration policy, Mr. Millman said that was probably the case, as migrants’ apprehensions on the border were 40 per cent lower than the same time this year: 140,024 migrants had been apprehended on the Mexico – United States border through end of June 2017 while during the same period last year the number was 267,746. If apprehensions were down and deaths were up, it meant that by definition the route had become deadlier: people were crossing in fewer numbers but dying in more numbers.

However, Mr. Millman warned that it was not easy to entangle the impact of the policy, and said that Mexico itself was deporting far more people than the United States, apprehending and deporting migrants back to Central America. Many of the migrants’ deaths had not occurred in the border area only, but in Chiapas, Tabasco and other regions, where particularly train deaths were greater than in the North. Anecdotally, people were saying being afraid of the heavy hand of the American law enforcement and migration officials, but the only thing that was certain was that the route had become deadlier.

In response to the question on whether the migrants were using riskier measures to cross then in the past, for example deciding to cross the El Paso, the spokesperson referred to the tragedy in San Antonio and noted that truck travel was considered a VIP Deluxe treatment; but, it was not uncommon to find casualties in trucks in Mexico and two years ago 71 persons had been found dead in trucks in Austria, mostly Syrians and Afghans. Travelling by truck was often characterised as the most expensive and the quickest way to get to the North. Concerning the river, the higher water levels and the swifter courants were much deadlier this year than before; migrants might have thought that it looked like they would have water up to their chin, but it turned out to be deeper and faster underneath. Authorities on both sides were warning about this issue as much as they could.

On the 1.9 billion dollars funding for the construction of the wall announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, the International Organization had been pretty clear over the years that barriers and tougher crossing obstacles channelled migration into the irregular routes that fattened the profit of criminal gangs. There was no evidence of their deterrent impact; the same was in the Mediterranean where people talked about deploying more boats to stop the migrants. Countries often wanted to be more muscular and didn’t like their laws being flouted, which is understandable, but building a higher and stronger wall and putting more troops on the borders tended to send people into riskier channels - the death count supported that view.

Answering questions raised about the demographic composition of the migratory flows across the Mexico – United States border, Mr. Millman said that the overwhelming majority were Central Americans who had surpassed the Mexicans in numbers; about 20 per cent were the so called ‘intercontinental’: South Asians and Africans. The mix of people crossing the borders was heterogeneous but the deaths seemed to be falling most heavily on Latin Americans - Central Americans even more than Mexicans. Just like in any other part of the world, the poorer you were, the more difficult it was going to be. Women and children were very active in asylum seeking in general, but this kind of migrations had always been a young man’s endeavour, with families choosing the strongest, quickest, cleverest son to attempt the move. Young single men were an overwhelming majority among those crossing the Mediterranean as well, but the number of families was on the increase. Of the 8,000 Bangladeshis who had crossed into Libya in 2017 were almost entirely single men, although they were beginning to see minors as well, but not so many women. Those were normal migratory patterns: early wave was dominated by one gender and one age group, which then broadened out as the communities got more established.

Geneva Events and Announcements

Michele Zaccheo, Chief of the Radio and Television Section, United Nations Information Service at UN Geneva, said that the Committee against Torture was meeting at 3 p.m. today, 28 July to conclude the review of efforts by Ireland to implement the provisions of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This sixty-first session of the Committee against Torture was taking place from 24 July until 11 August at the Palais Wilson in Geneva.

At 4.30 p.m. today, 28 July, the Human Rights Committee was closing its hundred and twentieth session during which it had examined the reports of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Honduras, Mongolia, Madagascar and Pakistan. It had also reviewed the application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Swaziland in the absence of a report.

From 31 July to 25 August, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination will hold its sixty-third session in the Palais Wilson in Geneva, during which it would examine the reports of Canada, Djibouti, United Arab Emirates, Equator, Russia, Kuwait, New Zealand and Tajikistan on the measures taken to implement the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Jennifer Ferguson-Mitchell, for the International Telecommunication Union, announced the release of the “2017 Global Information and Communication Technology Facts and Figures”, which stressed that, in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, no one must be left behind or offline. Right now, 70 per cent of the world’s youth were online and this went as high as 80 per cent in 104 countries - youth were really dominating the Internet adoption globally. The digital gender gap was increasing in some areas, particularly in the least developed countries and in Sub-Saharan Africa, but in the Americas it was shifting in favour of women who were making up the majority of Internet users. Broadband was increasingly going mobile due to it being more affordable than fixed broadband in many markets.

The report was under embargo until 12 noon on Monday, 31 July.

Asked if the data tracked roaming charges around the world, Ms. Ferguson-Mitchell said that those were not tracked yet, but the report provided country-by-country data which included also roaming charges.

Catherine Huissoud, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said the new report on the Iron Ore Market Report would be issued today 28 July, which was reflective of the general state of health of the state economy. Among the main findings was that in 2016, all the prices were on the rise, the production was up five per cent compared to 2015, while, for the fourth consecutive year, the production costs and the iron ore exploration budgets continued to decrease globally. The report was available on demand.

The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/UNOG280717