REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Office at Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from Spokespersons for the United Nations Environmental Programme, the International Telecommunication Union, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General’s Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was in Turin where he was chairing a three-day retreat for USGs and ASGs of the UN system at the UN staff college. In a series of intensive meetings, the group would be discussing UN global issues and reforms focusing on delivering results. It would be examining the UN's readiness and capacity to perform its duties, including but not limited to promoting peace and security. The Turin Retreat provided an opportunity for the UN's senior managers to explore and propose ways of better managing the organization and improving its effectiveness. Apart from these concrete objectives, it was expected that the retreat would promote unity of purpose and common understanding of the UN and its priorities. The Secretary-General was expected to arrive in Sudan early next week where he would visit Khartoum, Juba and El Fasher. He would then visit N’Djamena in Chad and Tripoli in Libya.

Statements by the Secretary-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said available in the press room were two new statements by the Secretary-General. Mr. Ban welcomed the release of the 19 remaining Korean hostages who had been held by the Taliban for over six weeks. He commended the efforts of the Afghan authorities, and of all those who had assisted with the negotiations to obtain their release. The Secretary-General's message to the United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, which was held in Brussels and was delivered on his behalf by Angela Kane, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, was also available.

Conference on Disarmament

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Conference on Disarmament, which would be concluding the third and last part of its 2007 session on Friday, 14 September, yesterday held a public plenary. Ambassador Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui of Syria, the President of the Conference, said a draft of the final report of the Conference of Disarmament to the General Assembly would be distributed to Member States. The report would be presented at the next plenary of the Conference, on Tuesday, 4 September, and they would continue to discuss it in closed session following the plenary.

A press release in English and French on yesterday’s plenary was available in the press room.

Consultations on Second Internet Governance Forum

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that consultations would be held in Geneva on Monday. 3 September to discuss the details of the substantive agenda and the programme of the second Internet Governance Forum, which would be held in Rio de Janeiro from 12 to 15 November 2007. Representatives of government, the private sector, civil society and the academic and technical Internet communities would hold informal consultations alongside members of a 47-member Advisory Group appointed to assist the United Nations Secretary-General to convene the Forum. Co-chairing the Geneva consultations would be Nitin Desai, who had been serving as the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for Internet Governance, and Hadil da Rocha Vianna, Director for Scientific and Technological Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, who would be joined by Markus Kummer, Executive Coordinator of the Internet Governance Forum who would serve as Secretary to the meeting. The consultations would be held in Room 18 at the Palais des Nations and were open.

Mr. Desai and Mr. Kummer would brief journalists on 3 September at 1:30 p.m. in press room 1.

Human Rights

Yvon Edoumou of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, would be having a press conference today at 2:30 p.m. in press room 1 to brief journalists on the latest developments in that country.

Asked about the reported visit by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food to Cuba, Mr. Edoumou said that the Office of the High Commissioner had heard about the visit through the media and would provide further information to the journalists as soon as it had obtained the information from the Special Rapporteur.

Other

Michael Williams of the United Nations Environmental Programme said today was his last day at UNEP as he would be joining the Group on Earth Observations secretariat in Geneva. He had prepared a contact list for journalists who needed information about UNEP and it was available.

Sanjay Acharya of the International Telecommunication Union said there would be a press conference at ITU on Tuesday, 4 September at 1:45 p.m. to launch the 2007 ITU report on trends in telecommunication reform. The ITU Council would also be starting on 4 September with 17 Ministers attending. The briefing would centre on the role of ITU in meeting the 2015 connectivity goals.

Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization said that as part of WIPO’s symposiums on the intellectual property dimension on the life sciences like biology, chemistry and medical technology, there would be a symposium on intellectual property and bio-ethics on 4 September. Another symposium would be on 19 September on intellectual property and public health.

Jana Borges of the World Trade Organization said the Dispute Settlement Body was meeting today at 3 p.m. and there would be a briefing later in the day. The Doha agriculture negotiations would be resuming on 3 September at 3 p.m. and would continue throughout the week. The industrial goods negotiations would resume the following week. As for the schedule of Director-General Pascal Lamy, he would be in Sydney on 5 September to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Ministerial Meeting.

Michael Klaus of the United Nations Children’s Fund said the first region-wide conference on birth registration concluded yesterday in Paraguay. In the final declaration, governments, the UN and civil society organizations from the 18 countries in Latin America agreed to join forces to make sure that by 2015, all children in the region were registered properly and had their legal identity recognized. The final declaration put emphasis on indigenous and afro-descendent peoples and their special needs. Throughout the Latin American region, one in six children did not legally exist because they were not registered at birth and had no formal official identity.

Mr. Klaus said there was a cholera outbreak in northern Iraq in Suleimaniya and Kirkuk. UNICEF and WHO were stepping up efforts to help hospitals in these two cities. Ten people had so far died, but only five of the deaths had been confirmed as cholera cases. There were now more than 80 cases confirmed.

In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, UNICEF’s Representative had just visited the north province which had been heavily affected by flooding and said that the situation was still very severe, Mr. Klaus said. The incidence of diarrhoea had gone up seven-fold and there were a lot of infections. Thousands of houses were completely destroyed. The Representative had also met with the Ministry of Health and they agreed on a nation-wide nutrition scanning to take place because indications showed a high level of mal-nutrition, especially among children.

In Peru, the focus now was to make sure that children could go back to school, Mr. Klaus said. A lot of pre-fabricated school buildings were being set up now. There were around 220,000 school-aged children in the affected areas who were waiting to go back to school, and this was a very important step for them to get back a normal life and recover from their traumatic experiences.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the June cyclone and floods in Pakistan had affected an estimated 2.5 million people in Sindh and Balochistan. The humanitarian situation remained critical for an estimated 250,000 persons in the worst affected areas who lived in spontaneous roadside settlements or public buildings like schools. Floodwaters had not yet receded and extensive farmland was still under water. A lot of aid had been distributed to the affected people, but it was not enough. The flash appeal for $ 38 million, issued on 18 July, had only been covered by 20 per cent.

Ms. Byrs said in Niger, a state of emergency had been declared in the north in the areas worst affected by the floods for the next three months. There was a problem of access to the affected population because of insecurity and the roads and transportation modes. Airplanes were needed to reach the affected areas as soon as possible.

Jennifer Pagonis of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR was launching a $ 27 million appeal today to fund the voluntary repatriation of 24,000 Mauritanian refugees from Senegal and Mali, a return that would help resolve one of the most protracted refugee situations in the world. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thousands of newly internally displaced people were fleeing rising tensions and insecurity in the Masisi and Rutshuru districts of North Kivu in the eastern part of the country. In Syria, UNHCR and the World Food Programme started yesterday a text SMS campaign by mobile phone to alert more than 33,000 vulnerable Iraqi refugees in Damascus of the launch of the first food distribution programme for them this weekend. And in Colombia, UNHCR continued to monitor the situation in Colombia’s southern department of Narino, where some 1,600 people returned after a week of displacement in Ecuador due to the complex situation currently prevailing in the region.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said a first shipment of 5,000 tents was arriving this weekend in the earthquake stricken city of Pisco in Peru. The IOM regional office in Lima was purchasing locally other emergency items including mattresses, blankets and kitchen sets, amongst others.
In Ecuador, the 1,553 Colombians who crossed the border into the country last week had returned home. IOM staff accompanied the returning group to the border, in close coordination with the Ecuadorian Government and UN agencies.

Mr. Chauzy said after 16 months of programming to meet the immediate needs of thousands of Timorese displaced by the communal violence of spring 2006, IOM and its partners were backing government efforts to develop strategies for sustainable return and reintegration that reflected the country's evolving political and security environment. And in Morocco, because of a lack of funding, IOM was today unable to meet pressing requests made by increasing numbers of undocumented migrants stranded in Morocco without adequate resources who wished to return home.

In Argentina, IOM and the international human resources company Manpower this week signed an agreement to provide counselling and job training to victims of trafficking with the aim of supporting their successful reintegration process and reducing the likelihood of being re-trafficked. And in Pakistan, IOM yesterday completed an interactive mass awareness raising campaign with a theatre show in Tando Allah Yar town in Sindh, exposing different forms of human trafficking.