REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, the 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 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Economic Commission for Europe, the International Labour Organization, and the International Organization for Migration. Also attending the briefing were organizers of this year's International Film Festival on Human Rights.


Secretary-General’s Mediation Between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier referred to the mini-summit hosted yesterday by the Secretary-General in Geneva between President El-Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. At the conclusion of the meeting, both leaders agreed to press ahead with immediate negotiations on the delimitation of their maritime and land borders. Speaking to the press, Secretary-General Annan said both sides had agreed that technical teams would meet in Geneva on 15 March to continue the discussions, adding that he intended to meet with the leaders again sometime in the course of next month in Africa to further pursue efforts towards resolving the border issue.

Copies of the joint communiqué of the meeting were available in the Press Room in English, French and Spanish as well as the transcript of the Secretary-Genera's remarks to the press.

Secretary-General's Trip to Paris

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced that the Secretary-General was in Paris today where he will deliver remarks at the Ministerial Conference, hosted by French President Jacques Chirac, on Innovative Sources of Financing for Development. Later in the day, he will meet with President Tassos Papadopoulos of Cyprus in order to review the situation in Cyprus and discuss ways of moving forward the process of reuniting Cyprus.

Geneva Activities

The Conference on Disarmament began its focused thematic discussion on nuclear disarmament today as part of its first session for 2006.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was continuing with its session. This morning it was continuing its examination of the report of El Salvador and would begin its review of the report of Uzbekistan this afternoon.

Upon his return to Geneva from the Great Lakes region, Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, will hold a press briefing on 6 March in Room III at 4 p.m.

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reminded correspondents that Dennis McNamara, Director and Special Adviser to the Emergency Relief Coordinator for Internally Displaced Persons, would brief the press in Press Room 1 today at 12 noon upon his return to Liberia.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier also announced that the World Health Organization would hold a press conference on 2 March at 2:30 p.m. on a mortality assessment it had conducted. The speaker scheduled top speak was Ties Boerma of WHO's Measurement and Health Information Systems.

Human Rights Council

Responding to a question concerning the calls by the United States to reopen negotiations on the Human Rights Council, José Luis Díaz, of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the High Commissioner had been very clear in her statement last week in which she called for broad support for the Human Rights Council. She said then there was no reason to believe that more negotiating time would yield a better result. The proposed text was the product of intense negotiations and the High Commissioner believed it was a good text.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier added that the Secretary-General had expressed his hopes that member States would realize they had a credible basis to move forward and should realize that the proposal would strengthen the human rights machinery. It was also noted that the new Council would be able to convene when required if there was a developing crisis and could conduct peer reviews looking into the human rights situation of any country.

Chad/Sudan

Jennifer Pagonis of the United Nations Refugee Agency said population movements were being observed in both directions along the Chad-Sudan border. In addition to the more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur who have sought refuge in eastern Chad in the past three years, UNHCR was now seeing indications that some Chadians were themselves fleeing in the opposite direction, to Darfur. UNHCR and Sudanese authorities were currently in the process of determining the status of those gathered in five makeshift camps erected around Galu and Azaza, mostly women and children. In interviews with UNHCR staff, Chadians cited a revel attack on the Chadian town of Adre on 18 December as the trigger that pushed them to flee across the order to Darfur. More than 100 people were reportedly killed in that attack. UNHCR and its partners were providing assistance to the group, including distribution of plastic sheeting. Meanwhile, Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees Judy Cheng-Hopkins yesterday began a one-week mission to Chad with a visit to Oure Cassoni refugee camp, the biggest in eastern Chad with some 29,600 Sudanese refugees.

Chad/Central African Republic

Ms. Pagonis of the United Nations Refugees Agency indicating that the transfer of thousands of newly arrived refugees from the Central African Republic to camps in southern Chad was continuing amid new reports of more than 1,000 additional arrivals in another remote Chadian border village. A UNHCR team was scheduled to travel to the border village of Békan today to check out the latest reports of new arrivals from northern CAR.

Sudan

Jemina Pandya of the International Organization for Migration drew attention to the ongoing multi-agency operation to contain an outbreak of cholera and acute watery diarrhoea, which have killed at least 89 people in the Juba and Yei areas of southern Sudan. More than 4,900 people have been infected in the two areas since the end of January, according to the World Health Organization. As part of its efforts to help contain the disease at a way station for internally displaced people in Juba, IOM has been asked by the UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for southern Sudan to manage and disperse monies from a UN sponsored emergency response fund. An initial amount of 74,000 USD is supporting the work of the WHO, IOM and two non-governmental organizations, the Adventist Development and Reconstruction Agency (ADRA) and Medair who are providing medial services.

Yemen

Ms. Pagonis of the United Nations refugee Agency indicated that on Saturday UNHCR's office in Aden, Yemen, said it had information that a smuggler's boat sailing from Somalia had forced all of its 137 passengers into deep waters off the Yemeni coast before turning around and heading back to Somalia. Aboard were 134 Somalis and three Ethiopians, including men, women and children. By Monday evening, 84 people had managed to reach shore safely, while 33 had been found dead on the Al Hodeiya shore, 10 kms east of Bir Ali on the southern coast. Another 30 passengers, including children, were still missing. UNHCR's team in Aden were providing the survivors with medical care, food and non-food items.

In a separate development, UNHCR's Yemen office will finish the first phase of a large-scale refugee registration exercise tomorrow in the capital Sana'a. The Yemen government and UNHCR had agreed in November to start re-registering thousands of refugees, most of them Somalis. So far, some 16,000 Somalis have been registered in Sana'a. The registration exercise will continue in five other registration centres in the country. The last registration took place in 2003.

Pakistan/Afghanistan

Jennifer Pagonis announced that UNHCR would restart its repatriation operation from Pakistan to Afghanistan tomorrow after the winter break. Some 400,000 Afghans were expected to repatriate to Afghanistan this year, the last year UNHCR-assisted returns under the current tripartite agreement with the two governments. Some 450,000 Afghans were repatriated under this agreement last year, bringing to 2.74 million the total number of returnees from Pakistan since 2002. Another 1.4 million Afghans have returned from Iran over the same period. This huge movement of people represents UNHCR's single largest return operation ever.

Democratic Republic of Congo

The UNHCR Spokesperson indicated that the joint United Nations heads mission to the Great Lakes regions was now in DRC's eastern region of south Kivu. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, James Morris of the World Food Programme, and Ann M. Veneman of UNICEF were scheduled to meet with Congolese refugees returning home by boat from Tanzania to the Democratic Republic of Congo port town of Baraka. The three heads met President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Kinshasa on yesterday with whom they discussed ways in which their agencies and the international community could best help the people of the country make the transition to a stable peace and full democracy.

Human Rights Film Festival

Léo Kaneman and Yaël Hazan, organizers of the International Film Festival on Human Rights (FIFDH), invited journalists to a press conference that was scheduled to take place at the Villa La Pastorale in Geneva on 1 March at 11 a.m. to discuss this year's festival. The theme of this year's festival, which was held each year during the Commission on Human Rights, was “Memory, Truth and Justice”. They noted that the FIFDH was founded in 2003 under the sponsorship of the late Sergio Vieira de Mello, Louise Arbour, Barbara Hendricks, William Hurt, Ruth Dreifuss, Robert Badinter, Hubert Nyssen, Jorge Semprun and Ken Loach. Organizers of the annual festival included journalists, human rights personalities and representatives of non-governmental organizations.

Other

Jean Michel Jakobowicz of the Economic Commission for Europe announced that on 2 March Albania would become the 50th country to accede to the Convention on Air Pollution [Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution]. Among the 55 members States to the Economic Commission for Europe, there were now 50 States that have ratified this Convention which dates back to 1979 and aims to control air pollution throughout the entire region.

Jemina Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said the IOM, the Inter American Development Bank and the offices of the First Ladies of Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador and Paraguay, would be launching a regional project on 1 March to combat child trafficking in those countries. The project will not only help combat child trafficking but will also raise awareness on sexual and reproductive health issues and related subjects such as domestic violence.