REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, 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 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the International Organization of Migration, the World Meteorological Organization, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Refugee Agency and the World Food Programme.

Secretary-General’s Visit to Geneva and Human Rights Council

Ms. Heuzé said the Secretary-General would be arriving in Geneva to attend the first session of the Human Rights Council which would be opening its work at 9 a.m. on Monday, 19 June in the Assembly Hall. As expected, the Chairman-elect of the Council, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, had reached agreement with Member States in informal consultations yesterday afternoon on the programme of work of the Council. It was available in the press room. On the first day, the Council would hear from Jan Eliasson, the President of the General Assembly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Louise Arbour, the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Then the Chairperson and the other members of the Bureau of the Council would be officially elected. There would be a short break in the meeting, around 11 a.m., and then the high-level segment of the Council would begin. In the Assembly Hall, there was an area reserved for journalists on the right side of the podium.

The embargoed statement of Mr. Eliasson would be provided early on Monday. The statement of the Secretary-General would be available later today under strict embargo. For journalists who were interested in learning more about the position of the Secretary-General on the Council, there was a possibility to organize a conference call this afternoon between journalists and Edward Mortimer, Head of the Speechwriting Unit. Interested journalists should approach her after the briefing. The High Commissioner’s embargoed statement would also be provided early Monday.

Concerning the programme of the Council, at the end of the high-level segment on Thursday, 22 June, the work of the Council would move to Room XVIII in the new building. On Friday, 23 June, the Council would take up the report of the High Commissioner, followed by an inter-active dialogue. On Monday, 26 June, the Council would take up “pressing human rights issues”. In the afternoon, it would start hearing from the five heads of the Working Groups.

A provisional list of the dignitaries speaking during the high-level segment was available. It named the country and the rank of the speaker. A detailed speakers’ list with names would be provided every morning. The list was still being amended at this point. A number of Ministers had asked to schedule press conferences on 19 and 20 June and once the list was finalized, it would be provided to journalists.

The Secretary-General’s schedule was very heavy on Monday, 19 June and he would not be able to speak to journalists. Mr. Eliasson and Ms. Arbour also would be spending most of Monday in the Council, but there were ongoing efforts to organize a stakeout with one or both of them in the afternoon. Ms. Heuzé said she would keep journalists posted on this issue.

The note to correspondents on the coverage of the Council which had been issued was very clear. Among other things, journalists who wanted to set up interviews with the Chairman could contact Rolando Gomez and those who wanted to meet with the President of the General Assembly could contact Renata Sivacolundhu.

On Wednesday, 21 June, the Secretary-General would address the Conference on Disarmament at 11 a.m. More details about his programme and bilateral meetings would be available each day next week.

Available in the press room was the transcript of the press conference which the Secretary-General gave yesterday in New York.

During the first week of the Council, the proceedings of the public plenaries could be watched on the UN webcast. This would help the work of journalists, and it would also provide the general public with access to the proceedings.

In response to a barrage of questions, Ms. Heuzé repeated that the list of speakers was still changing and that a detailed list with the names of the speakers would be available every morning of the high-level segment. Besides the Chairman of the Council, four Vice Chairpersons, one of whom would be the Rapporteur, would also be elected. Journalists could contact Rolando Gomez concerning which non-governmental organizations would take the floor and who would represent them. As for the “pressing human rights issues”, it was up to the Member States to decide what these issues were and to raise them.

José Luis Díaz of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said he would be sending journalists a list of the speakers for the first day of the high-level segment of the Human Rights Council on Monday, 19 June.

Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste

José Luis Díaz of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said a statement had been issued late yesterday about the High Commissioner condemning the attack on a civilian bus in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, which reportedly killed over 60 civilians. The High Commissioner said this attack was much more than a ceasefire violation, it was a grave breach of the most fundamental tenets of humanity. She urged the Government of Sri Lanka to ensure effective measures were in place to prevent any communal backlash and protect civilian life and property for all communities in Sri Lanka, including those displaced from their homes.

Concerning the situation in Timor-Leste, Mr. Díaz said the Secretary-General had tasked the High Commissioner and her Office with putting together a commission of inquiry to look into human rights violations that allegedly place in April and May of this year. The Office was in the process of putting together this inquiry commission. He hoped to be able to make an announcement soon on the composition of the mission and its deployment.

Indonesia Earthquake

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that according to the latest situation report on the earthquake in Indonesia, the situation appeared worse than expected, in particular in relation to the number of houses and people affected by the earthquake of 27 May. As of 15 June, the death toll stood at 5,749 and the number of injured stood at 38,568. Some 127,037 houses had been totally destroyed and 451,011 houses had suffered some damage. The total damage value now was approximately $ 3.1 billion. Around 5,000 tents and tarpaulins were being distributed daily, but at this rate of distribution, it would take 45 days to reach 100 per cent coverage of all those affected, concluding on 30 July. The Mount Merapi volcano alertness level was back to its highest. Pyroclastic flows went as far as 7 kilometers from the crater during the latest eruption and thousands of people had returned to evacuee camps. More details were available in the situation report. The appeal for $ 103 million had been covered by 12.6 per cent only which was very disappointing; even if the pledges were counted, it was still only covered by 20.7 per cent.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said that at the request of the Indonesian Government and international aid agencies, IOM was standardizing non-food assistance packages provided to hundreds of thousands of families affected by the earthquake on the island of Java. The extent of the damage done by the earthquake in the agricultural heartland of the most populous island on earth had only become clear in the past few days. A joint assessment by the Indonesian Government and World Bank this week concluded that close to 300,000 homes had either been completely destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. An estimated 1.3 million people were believed homeless.

Other

Ms. Heuzé announced that the new Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations Office at Geneva, Warren W. Tichenor, was today presenting his credentials to Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva at 11 a.m. A press release would be issued.

Mark Oliver of the World Meteorological Organization said a press release would be issued shortly on the World Day to Combat Desertification, which was commemorated on 17 June. It was about automatic weather stations and called for investment into these stations because they were a crucial factor in measuring wind erosion and sunlight and rainfall in remote areas. On Tuesday, 20 June, the El Nino update would be issued. It appeared that the Central and East Pacific Ocean was returning to a neutral zone, neither too hot nor too cold, which meant that the Ocean did not appear to be warming up.

Aurelia Blin of the World Trade Organization said agricultural negotiations would be continuing all of next week. There would also be services negotiations next week. The dispute settlement body would meet on 19 June and again on 22 June. As for the Director-General Pascal Lamy, he would be meeting on 20 June with the Morocco delegate for foreign affairs and cooperation, the Ukraine Foreign Affairs Minister and the UNDP Administrator. On 21 June, he would meet with the Minister of Economy of El Salvador. More details of the meetings were available in the printed schedule.

Damien Personnaz of the United Nations Children’s Fund said that the Day of the African Child was celebrated today and this year’s theme was violence against children, which threatened the physical, emotional and psychological well-being of children. Available was a press release with more details. A press conference on this issue by
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children affected by Armed Conflict, had just been given.

Mr. Personnaz said also available was a press release about the end of the visit of UN Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow to Darfur. Ms. Farrow urged all parties to commit themselves to a peaceful resolution of the Darfur crisis and to continue a dialogue to resolve differences in order to bring the misery and suffering of children to an end.

Jean Fabre of the United Nations Development Programme said UNDP’s Administrative Council would be meeting in Geneva next week. It would be opened by Kemal Dervis, the UNDP Administrator. Mr. Dervis would carry out his first official visit to Bern on 20 June. He would hold a press conference at 3 p.m. in Bern.

Mr. Fabre said an embargoed briefing would be held on 22 June at 11:30 a.m. concerning a very interesting report on human development in the Asia-Pacific region.
The report was embargoed until 29 June. It would be launched in Cambodia.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR has stepped up its emergency relief operation in Timor-Leste and has started reaching out to tens of thousands of people who fled violence in Dili for surrounding areas outside the capital. Official estimates now indicated that there were more displaced people outside the capital (78,000) than those in the various settlements in Dili (69,000). In total, some 1,000 tents had now been delivered to the displaced in various locations. While the situation appeared to have stabilised somewhat on the streets of Dili, UNHCR was still concerned for the physical security of people in the makeshift camps and settlements, particularly at night. UNHCR welcomed the increased patrolling of foreign troops in areas where displaced people had gathered and was continuing to press for a boosted security presence.

Mr. Redmond said UNHCR had just released a new position paper aimed at guiding States and others making decisions about whether individuals from Kosovo should continue to receive international protection in an asylum country or could be returned to Kosovo. The major change from the previous paper of March 2005 was that members of two specific Roma communities in Kosovo - the Ashkaelia and Egyptian -- were no longer considered to be among those at risk. UNHCR remained concerned about Kosovo Serbs, Roma and Albanians in situations where these groups constituted a minority.

Mr. Redmond said on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch released a report that was picked up by the wires and others on the situation of the Montagnards in Viet Nam. The report alleged that Vietnamese authorities had been detaining, interrogating and even torturing Montagnard asylum seekers who returned to Viet Nam from Cambodia. The report urged UNHCR to review its participation in the return exercise, called its monitoring 'flawed' and said its public statements appeared to be 'calculated' to gain greater access to Viet Nam's Central Highlands, the Montagnards place of origin. UNHCR found the report unbalanced and rejected its accusations. The allegations did not tally with UNHCR’s first-hand experience of the Montagnard caseload in Cambodia, nor with its 12 monitoring missions to visit returnees in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. The report drew very generalised conclusions from essentially the accounts of five people whose stories could not be verified by any objective means.

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said in Mauritania, the food situation of children and villagers remained a concern for WFP which fed 16,000 children in 260 food centers. That number was expected to be doubled in the upcoming weeks. This was the lean period in Mauritania when food stocks were depleted and the new harvest had not been gathered and this year it was particularly difficult. Children were being given the priority. The malnutrition rate for children was 13.3 per cent, and it was nearing the emergency figure of 15 per cent. The support of the international community remained absent. If WFP did not get the $ 4 million it needed, it would be forced to reduce food stocks starting July.

Sanjay Acharya of the International Telecommunication Union said ITU’s regional radio communications conference had been in session since 15 May and it would be concluding later this afternoon with the signing of a treaty agreement that would facilitate all digital, terrestrial broadcast services for sound and television. This represented a significant step in the future development of information and communication technologies as well as a revolutionary direction in improving communications worldwide. The conference agreed that the transition period to digital broadcasting, which would begin at midnight tonight, would conclude on 17 June 2015.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said IOM would start to deliver food aid to over 40,000 internally displaced Timorese in the Eastern districts of Baucau, Lautem and Viqueque early next week. IOM Chief of Mission Luiz Vieira, who was scheduled to visit Baucau with the Minister of Labour and UN officials tomorrow, said that while the needs of the estimated 67,000 IDPs in Dili camps had now been identified, the picture in the Eastern districts was far less clear.

Mr. Chauzy said in Haiti, the power of sports and the miracle of television were bringing communities together in Haitian neighbourhoods where peace and reconciliation were tenuous. Through its Haiti Transition Initiatives programme, the IOM office in Port au Prince had provided television sets to more than 25 sites throughout the Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods of Bel Air, Martissant and Cite Soleil.