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 International Labour Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General Launches Campaign to End Violence against Women

Ms. Heuzé said yesterday, as part of the opening of the 52nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched his multi-year campaign to end violence against women. Available in the press room were the remarks of the Secretary-General in English and in French, and a press release.

Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Organization said this year, ILO’s theme for the commemoration of International Women’s Day was “investing in decent work for women: not just right, but smart”, following the theme chosen by the United Nations. This year, as International Women’s Day on 8 March was a Saturday, ILO would celebrate all working women on Friday, 7 March. There would be a roundtable with four participants from the United States, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Nigeria at 10 a.m. on 7 March at ILO. There would also be a press conference on Thursday, 6 March at 11 a.m. in Room III on the updated report which ILO releases annually on main trends concerning employment and non-employment of women in the world entitled “Global Employment Trends on Women”.

Laetitia Dard of the ILO said among the interesting things in this year’s report was that for the first time, the report listed the number of women who were in vulnerable employment. An embargoed press release would be available during the press conference, which was also embargoed, along with the report, until 23:00 GMT on 26 March.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said the President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Doru Romulus Costea of Romania, would give a press conference on Friday, 29 February at noon in Room III to present the agenda of the seventh regular session of the Council which would start on Monday, 3 March.

In order to prepare for the Council’s Universal Periodic Review, available on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights were a number of reports presented by countries which would be reviewed by the UPR. Ms. Heuzé said she would make available on Friday a preliminary list of dignitaries of who would be addressing the high-level segment of the Council.

Ms. Heuzé said the Conference on Disarmament would be addressed on Tuesday, 4 March by a high number of dignitaries from the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Romania, Iran, Slovakia, Norway, Colombia, Argentina, Japan and Ukraine in the morning and Turkey and Viet Nam in the afternoon. On Wednesday, 5 March, it was expected that other member states would address the Conference.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was continuing its seventy-second session. The Committee had already considered the reports of Fiji, Italy and the United States. This morning, it was concluding the report of Belgium, and it would be reviewing reports from Nicaragua, Moldova and the Dominican Republic. Press releases in English and in French were issued at the end of the review of each country report.

Ms. Heuzé said there was a press conference at 3 p.m. this afternoon by the Permanent Mission of Brazil on sport for development and peace. On Wednesday, 27 February, the Assistant Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization would speak to journalists at 11 a.m. on international trademark filings in 2007.

Other

Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF Executive Director Anne Veneman was in the Liberian capital Monrovia where she announced that $ 17 million would become available through a new public/private partnership which would help rebuild Liberia’s primary education system. The Education Recovery Pooled Fund was formed as a result of a $ 12 million donation from the Dutch Government made through UNICEF and the Open Society Institute which would contribute $ 5 million. Currently, only 31.2 per cent of primary school children reached grade five, and 67 per cent of teachers in the public school system were unqualified. Ms. Veneman signed the partnership with the President of Liberia. A press release with more details was available.

William Spindler of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR and its partners had opened up a new site in the West Darfur region of Sudan to accommodate up to 6,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). The newly-established camp, called Abu Zar II, was located 2 km from El Geneina, the capital city of West Darfur State. The first group of 143 IDP families (about 500 people) who were displaced from Armankul village following violence in the area two weeks ago, would arrive on Wednesday. The group, many of whom fled the village of Saraf Jedad to Armankul earlier this year, were part of a larger group of 222 families (some 1,000 people) who were displaced for a second time and are in need of emergency assistance. Meanwhile, UNHCR was taking part in joint UN follow-up assessment missions to the villages of Sirba, Saleah, Abou Sourouj, Armankul, Kondobe, Saraf Jedad and Tendelti. In all these areas, some of the displaced populations were gradually returning, despite the destruction which followed attacks in the Northern Corridor, north of El Geneina, earlier this month.
Humanitarian agencies would need to further distribute food and relief emergency assistance to these affected populations, as they returned.

Mr. Spindler said UNHCR had sent two trucks with seven staff to the border with Sudan yesterday to continue its assessment missions, which were interrupted last week by ongoing bombing in West Darfur and increased insecurity at the border. The UNHCR team planned to stay three days in the Birak, Seinat and Korok areas, to assess the needs of the newly arrived refugees who had been arriving in Chad since February 9, following aerial bombing and ground attacks in West Darfur. According to the team at the border, more people had crossed into Chad over the past week-end, following renewed attacks on Jebel Moun in West Darfur. It was difficult to estimate how many people had crossed as they were scattered over several villages. More groups of refugees continued to arrive steadily. New arrivals in Birak and Seinat told UNHCR that bombardments and attacks had taken place near IDP camps and villages in Darfur, causing people to flee further north into the Jebel Moun area. Refugees added that last Friday, armed militia came and burned all remaining villages, prompting their residents to flee to eastern Chad. The latest arrivals were mainly women, children and elderly people and they were extremely traumatized.

In Cameroon, Mr. Spindler said an Ilyushin-76 cargo plane chartered by UNHCR was getting ready to leave Wednesday from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Garoua in Cameroon - 800 kms north of the capital Yaoundé. The plane would transport 40 tonnes of relief items for distribution to thousands of Chadian refugees who had fled earlier this month from the Chadian capital N'Djamena to the town of Kousseri, on the Cameroon side of the Chari river. This was the third airlift organized by UNHCR with relief items for Chadian refugees in Cameroon.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said IOM was currently working with the United Nations Emergency Team-Ecuador, the Civil Defence system and non- governmental organizations to provide emergency shelter, food, water and sanitation assistance to flood victims living in Ecuador's coastal provinces which had been particularly affected by incessant rains and swollen rivers. IOM was also working with its partners to create a national registry of the sheltered population according to age and sex so as to better identify their needs. The floods had affected 315,000 people. Around 13,500 people were currently living in temporary shelters and a further 100,000 were in need of assistance.

In Haiti, Mr. Chauzy said Caribbean immigration and consular officials were today concluding two days of regional consultations in the Haitian capital on visa policy and visa security measures. In Afghanistan, IOM had completed a training course on migration management for 30 members of the Afghan Parliament in Kabul. And in Pakistan, IOM and the UN Population Fund had constructed seven pre-fabricated Mother, Newborn Child Health Units in Mansehra district. The well-quipped facilities were located in one of the districts worst hit by the October 2005 earthquake. They would mainly provide primary health care to women, newborns and to the general public.

Asked about the situation in northern Iraq, Mr. Chauzy said that for the moment, the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq had not triggered any mass movement of people. The situation was still very sensitive and IOM was trying to get more information. IOM had prepositioned some stocks in northern Iraq and it was presently following the situation and considering how best these non-food items could be used to address any urgent needs.

Responding to the same question, Mr. Spindler of UNHCR said so far, UNHCR had not seen any movements of people, but it was also monitoring the situation from its offices in northern Iraq.