REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Meteorological Organization, the Global Climate Observing System Secretariat, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration.

Sudan

Ms. Heuzé said that the Secretary-General had decided to send Mr. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, a senior UN official, to Khartoum to deliver a message to the Sudanese President, Omar Al Bashir, following up on a weekend telephone conversation between the Secretary-General and President Bashir. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Ould-Abdallah would begin his mission to clarify details of the agreement reached last month at the high-level meeting on Darfur – in particular, the modalities and the way in which the joint “hybrid” operation of the African Union and the United Nations in Darfur would function. In addition, yesterday afternoon the Secretary-General had met with members of the Security Council, in the presence of Secretary-General-designate Ban Ki-moon, to discuss the situation in Darfur.

Alliance of Civilizations

Yesterday in New York, the Secretary-General, along with the Prime Ministers of Spain and Turkey, presented the report of the High-Level Group of the Alliance of Civilizations to an informal plenary meeting of the General Assembly, Ms. Heuzé reported. A transcript of the Secretary-General's remarks to the General Assembly on that occasion is available in the press room.

Secretary-General

Today the Secretary-General would hold his last press conference in New York at 10.30 a.m. New York time, Ms. Heuzé said. It would be available in real time (4.30 p.m. in Geneva) via webcast on the UN website.

Geneva Activities

Yesterday the United Nations launched a new set of standards aimed at improving the process of disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating ex-combatants, essential to restoring stability to war-ravaged countries. The new Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards marked the first time that a number of UN agencies, funds and programmes had collaborated to establish field-tested criteria to implement the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process, Ms. Heuzé underscored. Jointly launched yesterday in Geneva and New York, participants included Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown and UNOG Director-General Sergei Ordzhonikidze, as well as representatives from the ILO as coordinator, UNICEF, UNDP and DPKO.

Ms. Heuzé announced that the Annual Report of the Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva, entitled "Translating Commitments Into Action" was available in the room. This report, published in English and French, provided an overview of the activities of the Office in 2006. In its foreword, Mr. Ordzhonikidze underscores how “the particular strengths of Geneva, especially in the protection and promotion of human rights, disarmament, provision of humanitarian assistance, advancement of social and economic development, provide a valuable framework in which to engage in a constructive dialogue …”. The report recorded that the number of meetings held in Geneva had continued to increase and the same trend was expected in 2007.

José-Luis Diaz of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the international legal arsenal for the protection and promotion of human rights continued to be strengthened. Just last week, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – a landmark convention that had been a long time in the making. Tomorrow, the General Assembly was expected to adopt the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, largely drafted here in Geneva. And, yesterday, also here in Geneva, the States parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture elected 10 members to a new Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, which would be able to visit and examine places of detention in countries parties to the Protocol and to make recommendations to the countries concerned. The Subcommittee was expected to hold their first meeting on 19 to 23 February. At that meeting, the 10 members were expected to establish their procedures and set up their methods of work.

Flooding in the Horn of Africa

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the rains, though more moderate now, were continuing in Kenya. Between 22 October and 9 December some 114 had died in the floods, and some 723,000 were now affected. The waters were very high in the region of Lake Victoria and the Tana River basin. Some 20 health centres were no longer accessible by humanitarian workers, and 180,000 individuals near the Tana River were in need of food, and health aid. In Somalia, OCHA was very concerned about the growing food insecurity, in particular in Bay province. Farmers had being fleeing the region owing to the armed conflict there, but OCHA reports from Bay and Bakool showed that the floods had brought new concerns for crops, as well as a deterioration in sanitary conditions and heightened levels of water-borne diseases. Ms. Byrs highlighted that the UN had only received $5 million of the $18 million requested to assist the victims.

Simon Pluess of the World Food Programme (WFP) said that some 455,000 in Somalia were receiving food aid by helicopter and trucks, and airdrops were scheduled for the coming days. In Kenya, airdrops were also planned to begin tomorrow; aid was also being delivered to the Tana River area via heavy-lift helicopters hired by WFP. The task for the next two weeks was to airdrop 950 tons in Dardar Camp to ensure food assistance in the area after the first of the year. In Kenya, WFP fed some 563,000 Kenyans, plus some 100,000 refugees; in Somalia, WFP was feeding 450,000 people; and in Ethiopia some 362,000; for a total of 1,480,000 flood-affected people receiving WFP aid in the Horn of Africa.

Initiative on Climate Information for Development for Africa

William Westermeyer of the Global Climate Observing System Secretariat (an organization sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)) announced a new initiative – a report and 10-year implementation strategy, entitled "Climate Information for Development Needs: and Action Plan for Africa". African countries and people were subject to severe drought, flooding, food shortages and disease, and most of those natural disasters were climate-related, Mr. Westermeyer pointed out. As climate change and development were related, the Global Climate Observing System and its partners – the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, WMO, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society – wanted to concentrate on improving Africa's ability to respond to climate variability and to utilize climate information in development planning. The initial phase of the $200 million 10-year plan, which would focus on demonstrating the value of climate risk information, had already received substantial funding. Copies of the report, as well as a press release, were available at the back of the room.

High Commissioner for Refugees to Visit Chad

William Spindler of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced that High Commissioner António Guterres would leave tomorrow on a two-day mission to Chad, a country struggling under the weight of 370,000 refugees and internally displaced people amid growing insecurity that had spread across the border from Sudan's Darfur region. In N'Djamena on Thursday, Mr. Guterres was expected to meet with senior Chadian officials, including the President, to discuss the dire humanitarian situation facing some 232,000 Darfur refugees and 90,000 displaced Chadians in remote eastern Chad, as well as another 48,000 Central African Republic refugees in the south. On Friday, he would travel to the east of the country to meet with Darfur refugees, recently displaced Chadians, UNHCR staff and other aid workers trying to cope with one of the world's most difficult and urgent humanitarian crises.

Other

Michael Williams of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said that for the last several years UNEP had been celebrating the holiday season with a story on caviar. Last January the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) had banned the sale of caviar from the Caspian Sea – by far the largest world producer. The caviar quotas for 2007 would be announced by the CITES Secretariat on Tuesday, 2 January, and a press briefing would be organized, with details to be announced.

Michael Bociurkiw of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced that the Government of Spain had contributed €1 million to UNICEF Angola to expand maternal and child healthcare interventions in an initial five provinces that comprised 50 per cent of Angola’s population. He recalled that Angola had one of the highest maternal, neonatal and child mortality rates in the world. A press release was available in the back of the room.

On Kenya, UNICEF was releasing the results of a joint study with the Kenyan Government, which showed that child sex tourism and sexual exploitation of children in the Kenyan coast towns of Mombasa, Kilifi, Malindi and Kwale had reached alarming levels. Up to 30 per cent of 12- to 18-year-old girls in those communities were selling sex for goods and cash. Mr. Bociurkiw underscored that, according to the report, European men represented approximately half of the clients who abused Kenyan children, with Italians, Germans and Swiss topping the list. To collect the data, innovative methods were used, including distributing diaries to children to record who their customers were and what kind of experiences they went through.

Responding to questions, Mr. Bociurkiw stressed that major work had to be done to change people's mentality, as well as to put food on their tables, before the problem could be solved. The survey showed that a lot of families felt it was acceptable for children to engage in sex for cash to feed the family, and the level of acceptance among those in the tourism industry – such as bar owners, and restauranteurs – was very high. Another shocking finding, including among foreigners surveyed, was that many thought it was acceptable to engage in sex with children without using condoms. The report contained a number of recommendations for both the Kenyan Government and those of the client countries to stop this trade.

Mr. Spindler of UNHCR noted that yesterday, 18 December, UNHCR had launched a repatriation airlift for some of 12,700 vulnerable Angolan refugees from Bas Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One plane, carrying 53 refugees, had flown refugees from the DRC to Angola. Today, four flights were scheduled. The airlift is part of the last phase of Angolan repatriation. Once completed later this month, it will mark the end of a four-year repatriation programme for hundreds of thousands of Angolan refugees.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced a joint programme with IOM, the World Bank and the Indonesian Government to build 16,000 transitional shelters for May 2006 earthquake victims. He also announced the presentation of a new IOM study to the government of Yemen, containing IOM's new recommendations for assisting trafficked children. Finally, Mr. Chauzy drew attention to an IOM pilot project to provide reintegration assistance to victims of trafficking in Nicaragua's Chinandega province. Briefing notes on the new initiatives were available at the back of the room.