REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Chief of the Press and External Relations Section of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from Spokespersons for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Meteorological Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Trade Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General’s Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday continued his meetings with all the main political actors in Côte d’Ivoire. The Secretary-General presided over the signing of a Code of Good Conduct by the country’s political parties for the November elections. The Secretary-General also signed an agreement with the Prime Minister and the donor community, in which donors pledged 27 million Euros towards the next phase of the peace process.

The Secretary-General was today in Vienna where he will attend the inauguration of additional conference facilities at the Vienna International Centre, where the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Office in Vienna, the UN Industrial Development Organization and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization have their headquarters.

The Secretary General will, on 28 and 29 April, chair the meeting in Berne of the United Nations’ Chief Executive Board, a meeting that will bring together 27 heads of Agencies, Funds and Programmes and will largely focus on increasing food prices and the possible responses from the United Nations System. The meeting, which is closed to the press, will be held at the Headquarters of the Universal Postal Union in Berne.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Secretary-General would give a press conference on 29 April at 9 a.m. in Berne. He will be accompanied by Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the World Food Programme; Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization; Lennart Bage, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development; and Robert Zoellik, President of the World Bank. The press conference will be held in the press room of the Swiss Parliament.

Also on the 29th, in Geneva, the Secretary General will deliver at 4 p.m. the first of a series of lectures organized by the United Nations Office at Geneva and UNITAR, the UN Institute for Training and Research. The theme of the lecture will be “Are the Development goals doomed to fail?” The lecture will have an interactive part.

Next Friday, 2 May, the Secretary-General will chair a meeting of the Quartet Principals in London to review all aspects of the process launched at Annapolis and the situation on the ground. The meeting will take place in the margins of a meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee the same day which is convening to assess progress in Palestinian institutional and economic development since the last meeting in New York last September.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said a new report by the Secretary-General on the UN Mission in Sudan has been issued. It was available on the UN website and journalists who wanted a paper copy could also get it from the Information Service.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Committee on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families was today concluding its eighth session at the Palais Wilson. The Committee’s concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Syria and Bolivia, which it had considered during the session, would be issued later in the day, as well as the roundup press release.

The Committee against Torture will meet at the Palais Wilson in Geneva from 28 April to 16 May to review measures adopted by Australia, Sweden, Algeria, Costa Rica, Indonesia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Zambia and Iceland to prevent and punish acts of torture. At the first meeting of the fortieth session, newly elected Committee member will be sworn in and the Committee will elect its Chairperson and bureau and adopt its agenda.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will also meet at the Palais Wilson in Geneva from 28 April to 16 May 2008 to examine measures taken by France, Benin, Bolivia and India to comply with the standards of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Background press releases for the two Committees were in the press room since yesterday.

A background press release on the Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which will hold its second session from 28 April to 9 May 2008 in the Assembly Hall at the United Nations Office at Geneva, was issued this morning. This is the second of three sessions of the Preparatory Committee that will be held prior to the 2010 Review Conference.

Roll Back Malaria

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said the first ever World Malaria Day was being commemorated today. She had invited a colleague to speak more about this disease which was very important for the WHO. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan was in New York to attend the meeting today with the Secretary-General on malaria.

Jan Van Erps of the World Health Organization said the Roll Back Malaria partnership had been organizing African Malaria Day for 10 years now, and today was the first World Malaria Day. Roll Back Malaria wanted to bring this global issue to the table on this day. Over the past 10 years, a lot of progress had been made. Global funding had increased from $ 60 million in 1998 to $ 1.2 billion in 2007. But despite this progress, at the district level, in many countries, over a million deaths were deplored annually, 90 per cent of whom were children under the age of five years. The targets set out at the beginning of the new millennium were to effectively protect 80 per cent of people living at risk with the mosquito nets, and effectively treat 80 per cent of children. The world was far from reaching these targets. That was why the Secretary-General would make a strong call today to the donor community worldwide for a big push to increase funding from $ 1.2 billion to $ 3.4 billion annually. This would enable two offensives to continue, the mass distribution of bed nets treated with insecticides and the provision of the Chinese traditional medicine in the private medical sector, as it was mainly available only in the public medical sector. With the mosquito nets and the Chinese medicine, it was possible to reduce the burden to five per cent or less of what it was today. Within a few years time, latest by 2015, they should be down to three to five per cent, even in countries as difficult as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To eradicate the tail of the endemic, new tools would be needed, and obviously one of those tools would be a vaccine.

Mr. Van Erps said an event will be held this afternoon at WHO to discuss promises made in the fight against malaria for pregnant women.

Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF was participating in the Secretary-General’s meeting on malaria today and was also part of the Roll Back Malaria partnership. Every 30 seconds, a child died from malaria. Malaria killed 800,000 children annually, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. UNICEF was the biggest provider of bed nets treated with insecticides around the world. On the occasion of World Malaria Day, UNICEF Director-General Ann Veneman said that it was unacceptable that malaria killed more than 1 million persons annually, most of them children. It was a disease which could be prevented and treated.

Refugees

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said the latest flare-up in fighting this week in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, had sparked a fresh exodus of an estimated 7,000 people rushing to escape violence that had killed a substantial number of civilians and reportedly wounded some 200, including women and children. The exodus from Mogadishu further aggravated the situation in a country where over 1 million people were already internally displaced. International aid agencies, including UNHCR, were already encountering serious security obstacles in reaching the affected populations to provide them with the protection and assistance they need. As soon as security allowed, UNHCR would make another round of aid distribution which would benefit up to 14,000 families, or 84,000 persons.

Mr. Redmond said UNHCR’s office in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province yesterday halted a distribution of aid to displaced people amid a fresh eruption of violence. UNHCR had also suspended the registration of new arrivals at sites for internally displaced persons.

Other

Carine Van Maele of the World Meteorological Organization said improving climate predictions was a priority issue for WMO to help the agricultural sector worldwide adapt to climate changes and to ensure food security. Climatic changes could threaten agricultural productivity and the survival of populations, especially in Africa. Climatic changes could reduce the amount of land used for cultivation. In certain African countries, agricultural output could be reduced by 50 per cent between now and 2020. WMO had organized a series of workshops and information sessions for members of the agricultural sector in the worst affected areas to teach them to better use the services of climate prediction available today and to help them to decide in light of them which crops to plant. One such seminar was held in Niger on 23 and 24 April for a number of sub-Saharan countries. A senior WMO official was back from Niger and could brief journalists on this issue.

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization, responding to a question on the spread of measles among unvaccinated populations in Europe, said it was correct that a measles outbreak was circulating in a number of European countries, including Switzerland and Austria, and there had also been a case in the United States. There had been a number of articles in the Swiss papers, especially concerning the European football championship to be hosted in Switzerland and Austria in June. WHO’s Regional Office for Europe had prepared an update on the situation on 16 April. It stated that since November 2006, an outbreak of measles had spread across Switzerland and other European countries. The health authorities of these countries had informed the populations about the risks of contracting measles and stressed the importance of vaccination. Travelers were requested to verify the status of their vaccination. WHO commended these recommendations. Anyone visiting countries affected by this outbreak should verify the status of their vaccination before traveling.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said she would talk about the situation in Tajikistan today. She recalled that Tajikistan had suffered from a seriously cold winter with a heavy snowfall. Now, high temperatures had caused this snow at high elevations to melt. Today, the likelihood of floods and landslides remained high all over the country. The two most disaster prone areas were the Zerazshan and Rasht valleys, where 422 villages were identified at high risk. There was also some localized drought and the scale of locust infestations was predicted to be exceptionally high this year. The Food and Agriculture Organization was appealing for
$ 500,000 to cover the procurement of pesticides and equipment to address locust infestation and avoid potentially catastrophic outbreak. Locust infested areas were feared to exceed 150,000 hectares, an increase of nearly 30 per cent from 2007. The pest was developing quicker and earlier than usual and action was extremely time sensitive. The United Nations and its partners, together with the Government of Tajikistan, had launched on 15 February a Flash Appeal of $ 25 million, and to date, the appeal was 46 per cent covered. The appeal would probably have to be updated to put into consideration the threat of landslides and locusts. There were more details in the briefing notes.

Janaina Borges of the World Trade Organization said the Anti-Dumping Committee and the Import Licensing Committee were meeting on 28 April. The Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Committee and the Intellectual Property Negotiations (TRIPS Council “special session”) were meeting on 29 April. And the Safeguards Committee was meeting on 30 April. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy would be participating in the Chief Executives Board of the UN system in Bern.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said IOM would provide technical and logistical support to the Colombian Government as it began a ten-year compensation programme for victims of violence by illegal armed groups in the country. In Haiti, in light of recent incidents due to a sharp increase in the cost of living and rising concerns of food insecurity, IOM in Haiti was looking to expand its infrastructure programme to provide more labour and income generation opportunities to impoverished Haitians while also making long-term investments in infrastructure and agricultural projects. Concerning Kenya, IOM had received $ 504,000 from the Norwegian Government to provide critical psychosocial support to internally displaced persons in Kenya. And in Peru, IOM was sponsoring, with support from Telefonica del Peru, a photo exhibit on child labour by award-winning Spanish photographer Fernando Moleres.