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 and representatives from the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration and the World Trade Organization.
Secretary-General’s Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that yesterday United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had addressed the high-level segment of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Poznan, Poland, where he had called for bold, urgent steps to tackle what he called “the defining global challenge of our time”. Declaring that the next generation was counting on the international community to act, he said they must not fail. Mr. Ban Ki-moon also noted that the coming year was the year of climate change, adding that they were looking for leadership on a Green New Deal to come from the European Union and from the United States. The Poznan Conference constituted one step in the negotiations on an effective international response to climate change, which was to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. The Secretary-General’s remarks were available in the Press Room.
This morning the Secretary-General would arrive in Geneva, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced. Mr. Ban would hold a press conference at 12 p.m. in Room III, and then, at 3 p.m., would participate in the high-level segment of the commemorative session of the Human Rights Council, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was being held in Room XX. The full programme of the Secretary-General for his stay in Geneva had been sent to journalists this morning and hard copies were available in the Press Room, along with the Order of the Day and the list of speakers for this morning’s and this afternoon’s meetings of the commemorative session of the Council.
Situation in Zimbabwe
Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that available at the back of the room was a news note on the $17.5 million UNICEF appeal for its 120-day emergency response in Zimbabwe. UNICEF was focusing its assistance efforts on the provision of essential basic services, including health and nutrition, and they were providing nutritional supplements and water treatment supplies. UNICEF was also trucking 470,000 litres of water a day, and distributing water purification tablets to over 3.5 million people in Zimbabwe. UNICEF had a team of emergency specialists working in all the sectors touching on water and sanitation.
Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that, according to the latest figures dating from 11 December, there were now 16,700 cases of cholera in Zimbabwe, with 792 deaths. The fatality rate stood at 4.7 per cent. Here she noted that, for a cholera outbreak to be considered under control, the fatality rate should be less than 1 per cent. The majority of cases were found in the region around the capital, Harare, with 842, cases and 189 deaths. Other clusters of cases were found in Beitbridge, on the frontier with South Africa, and in Mudzi, on the Mozambique border. It was the most serious outbreak of cholera ever registered in Zimbabwe. WHO was appealing for $6 million for its response in the coming months to control the outbreak, which, as everyone knew, was owing to a lack of clean water and a breakdown in the sanitation and health infrastructure in the country.
In response to a question about President Mugabe’s assertion that the cholera outbreak was under control now, Ms. Chaib said, “[judging] by the number of cholera cases, it was clearly an increasing trend since 20 November”. WHO would not comment on President Mugabe’s assertion. “Our only goal is to work with the Ministry of Health and partners to help treat the sick and prevent further spread [of the outbreak]”.
“I don’t believe the cholera outbreak is under control as of now”, Ms. Chaib said in response to a query as to whether the outbreak was spreading. As the lead agency in the health cluster, WHO had established a cholera control and command centre and hoped in coming days and weeks they hoped to be able to analyse the trend of this cholera outbreak. For the time being, it was too early to be assertive about the trends.
Responding on queries about the surrounding area, Ms. Chaib reported that, in South Africa, there were 751 cases and 11 deaths, most of the cases in the Limpopo area. There were also cases reported in Botswana and Mozambique, but in smaller numbers. “The Ministers of Zimbabwe and South Africa said it was not a question of closing the borders between the two countries, at least not at the moment”, Ms. Chaib said. As to whether the reported deaths in neighbouring countries were deaths of Zimbabweans who had crossed the border, it was not known whether the border cases were “indigenous or imported”.
Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that IOM had received just over $600,000 in funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and 25 tons of in-kind contributions from the international relief organization Americares, which would allow IOM to greatly expand its emergency response to the cholera epidemic across Zimbabwe. IOM would put particular emphasis on mobile and vulnerable populations and border areas. In Beitbridge, on the border with South Africa, IOM and its partners continued to provide medical supplies, water purifying tablets and chemicals to decontaminate households where suspected cases of cholera had been reported. IOM was also continuing to support the deployment of nurses and community health volunteers in cholera treatment centres in Beitbridge, where IOM ran a reception and support centre for returning Zimbabwe migrants, as well as in a number of other districts where cholera cases were still being reported.
Haiti
Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in an update, said that the September Flash Appeal for Haiti was still currently only 48 per cent funded: out of the requested $107 million, only $50 million had been received and they needed $55 million to assist those affected by the storms that had devastated the country. In Baie d’Orange, in the South-East Department, 2 of 60 severely malnourished children who had been hospitalized there had died. It was hoped that the imminent opening of school feeding programmes in the region would help in curbing the malnutrition situation.
Around 47 per cent of families were still living in host-family settings or in temporary shelters and had not been able to return to their homes, three months after the series of tropical storms that had hit Haiti, Ms. Byrs underscored. There was also an urgent need for more financing for the agricultural sector and to help repair of the sanitation system so as to avoid a worsening of the malnutrition situation.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo UNHCR remained extremely concerned for the safety of the displaced Congolese population in Kibati. The civilian character of two UNHCR-run camps there was continually being violated. In another incident early this morning, two young girls had been shot. A five-year-old died and a seven-year-old girl was fighting for her life in a local hospital. UNHCR staff had also reported this morning that another woman had been raped by armed men in the vicinity of Kibati camp yesterday evening.
UNHCR was also carrying out voluntary transfers of displaced Congolese civilians from the Kibati camps, and away from the confrontation line, to a new camp at Mugunga III, just west of Goma, said Mr. Redmond. There were some 65,000 internally displaced persons potentially at risk in Kibati as warring parties maintained their positions close to the camps. Mugunga III was the fifth UNHCR-run site west of Goma. UNHCR had so far moved 616 families, or 1,780 internally displaced persons, to sites in Mugunga, and the number those in Kibati who were willing to relocate to the new site appeared to be increasing.
Another journalist said that in a previous briefing the UNHCR had announced that they had lost 90,000 people and wondered if they had found them since then. Mr. Redmond said those 90,000 people had been in camps north of Goma. UNHCR believed that they had gone back to their villages, some had gone to Uganda, but they did not know whether the others had sought refuge in other villages with friends or families. The problem was that UNHCR did not have the required access to that region and to look for these people, as it was a dangerous area.
Other
Turning to in Ecuador, Mr. Redmond said that Ecuador had this week started a nationwide refugee registration scheme in two pilot locations along the border with Colombia. Up to 50,000 refugees would benefit from the project, which aimed to recognize and document refugees who had been in the country for more than a year. Ecuador was home to some 20,000 refugees, but an additional 130,000 people who might be in need of international protection had not been registered, either through lack of information or difficulty of access.
UNHCR had three mobile teams that were now working with the Ecuadorian Government to take part in the pilot phase in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. They had begun on Monday in two small communities, which were very isolated and lacking in basic infrastructure like electricity and running water. This exercise would test the logistics of the operation and involved setting up a connection with a central database in Quito. The objective was to speed up the registration process, so that people in need of international protection could be interviewed, assessed and issued with documentation on the same day, said Mr. Redmond.
Ms. Taveau said that at the back of the room were copies of “The Child Care Transition”, a UNICEF report released yesterday which provided a league table, a sort of “report card”, on early childhood education and care in economically advanced countries. It was the eighth in a series that looked to examine the situation with regard to the protection of children in industrialized countries.
Ms. Taveau also announced that on Monday, 16 December at 11 a.m. in Room III UNICEF Special Ambassador Mia Farrow would be on hand to brief journalists on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following her mission to North Kivu.
A WHO representative invited journalists to a breakfast in Press Room I, on Tuesday, 17 December, from 9 to 10 a.m. to be briefed on the outcome of the Third Conference of the Parties to the Cannes Anti-Tobacco Convention, which was held last month in Durban. Although the Conference was over, it was not old news, as the effects of its outcome document would soon be clearly felt throughout the world quite soon, as the countries parties enacted the anti-tobacco legislation to which they had committed themselves. The Director of the Cannes Convention would be on hand to speak with journalists.
Ms. Pandya of IOM highlighted a three-day IOM meeting starting on Sunday, 14 December in Cairo focusing on provision of direct assistance to victims of trafficking in the Middle East. The meeting would bring together representatives from 22 Arab countries, non-governmental organizations, civil society and international organizations. The Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak and IOM Director General William Swing would be at the opening session. The meeting would have very much a rights-based approach to counter-trafficking responses, particularly among legislators and law enforcers. This meeting was actually a milestone in Middle East efforts to counter trafficking efforts because, although most countries in the region were signatories to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent Trafficking in Persons, there was actually very limited capacity to address human trafficking in the region and a lack of comprehensive national legislation, against a very high mobility of people to, from and through the region.
Janaina Borges of the World Trade Organization (WTO) noted that at 11:30 a.m. the Director-General would meet with key delegations to decide whether or not to go ahead and call a ministerial meeting later this month in Geneva to finish the Doha Round modalities. That meeting would be with about 30 delegations. Later in the day, around 3 p.m., Mr. Lamy would discuss the issue with all heads of delegations in an informal meeting with all WTO members. Later in the day, Director-General Lamy would hold a press conference at the WTO, in Room D to announce the results, at a time to be confirmed. Journalists were asked to stand by from 4 p.m. as it was expected that the consultations would be short.
Announcing the WTO schedule for next week, Ms. Borges said there would be a meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m. and the regular meeting of the General Council on Thursday and Friday. Schedules of other meetings, and the Director General’s schedule for next week were available in the press room.