REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Corinne Momal-Vanian, the Director of the United Nations Information Service, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Food Programme.

Situation in the Horn of Africa

Adrian Edwards of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that UNHCR had deployed an emergency team to the Gode area, some 250 kilometres north of the refugee camps at Dollo Ado, Ethiopia. In coordination with the Ethiopian authorities, United Nations agencies and NGOs, UNHCR was responding to a new influx of about 18,000 new refugees from Somalia. UNHCR’s team included experts in health, nutrition, protection, field coordination and registration whose task was to profile and register the newly arrived refugees, identify needs and deliver aid. UNHCR would also help transport those refugees who were willing to be relocated to the existing camps in Dollo Ado. The organization was also planning to airlift in aid for up to 20,000 people from UNHCR’s stocks in Dubai later this week. About 3,000 locally supplied tents were also being rushed to the area.

The priority for UNHCR was to save lives, Mr. Edwards went on to say. Ensuring that new arrivals received food, water and medical attention was critically important. Several NGOs with field presences in the area were already making limited interventions in the areas of health, nutrition and provision of water, and UNHCR was endeavouring to provide additional support where necessary. A principal concern for UNHCR remained the still mortality rate at the Kobe camp in the Dollo Ado area - a major cause of death was suspected measles.

In Somalia, distributions of emergency assistance packages had been continuing. UNHCR was still seeing urgent conditions there and the current weather conditions were not conducive to an improvement of any kind. There was a mix of very hot conditions and rain, and people were saying that in those circumstances the aid they received helped, but much more was needed.

In Kenya, relocations of people to the Ifo extension areas and the Kambioos camp were proceeding as planned. People had already been moved into both areas. UNHCR was seeing on average about 1,200 arriving at Dadaab every single day.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration confirmed that the measles vaccination campaign had started at the Dollo Ado refugee complex. IOM and partners, including the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Ethiopian Government, had started to vaccinate children from the age of six months up to 15 years at the Melkadida refugee camp, about 25 kilometers from Dollo Ado. IOM was also providing polio prophylaxis. Out of the 30,000 children who shall be vaccinated, IOM would attempt to vaccinate 7,500 by the end of the month.

IOM had also started to assist United Nations agencies with the relocation of Somali refugees to the new Ifo camp on 18 August. To date, the organization had relocated about 3,000 people, with the aim being to relocate some 30,000 Somalis from the overcrowded Dadaab camps to the Ifo extension camp, perhaps by the end of this month.
Asked about the weather forecast for Somalia, Clare Nullis of the World Meteorological Organization said that Somalia had two rainy seasons, the next one being around the month of October. From 2 to 3 September, the Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum, a two-day meeting in Uganda, would be looking ahead to the forthcoming weather season for the Horn of Africa. WMO would provide further information on the outcome of that meeting and would also issue shortly its periodic update on El Niño and La Niña, which also had an impact on weather patterns in the Horn of Africa.

Hurricane Irene

Ms. Nullis said that WMO was monitoring the progress of Hurricane Irene, the tropical storm which had formed on Saturday, 20 August. The storm had increased in intensity as it moved west-north-westward to become the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season.

According to the United States National Hurricane Center, Irene had strengthened into a category 2 hurricane, and the center was predicting that it would carry on strengthening in the coming hours and next couple of days. The centre of Hurricane Irene was just north of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and would be near or over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the south-eastern Bahamas later today. By early Wednesday, Irene was forecast to be a major hurricane near the central Bahamas. The latest warnings could be found on www.hurricanes.gov, Ms. Nullis said.

Hurricane warnings were in effect for the Dominican Republic, the South-Eastern Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Ms. Nullis went on to say, adding that hurricane watches were in effect for the North Coast of Haiti and the Central Bahamas. In Haiti, a red-level alert had been issued on 21 August in consultation between the Haitian Meteorological Service and the Risk Management Secretariat. This bulletin was frequently updated and was available in French at http://www.meteo-haiti.gouv.ht/vigilance.php. The most recent update, issued at 1 am local time (8 a.m. Geneva time), warned of heavy rains and violent gusts of wind in the North and Centre of Haiti in the coming hours, with winds that may reach a maximum speed of 160 kilometers per hour, and with gusts even stronger than that. It said the red alert would stay in place for whole of Tuesday.

The hurricane season ran from May until the end of November, Ms. Nullis went on to say. The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted that this season would be active. While Irene was the first hurricane, the Administration had predicted this season would notably see seven to ten hurricanes, of which three to five could be major hurricanes, meaning that they were category three, four or five hurricanes.

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the Haitian authorities have issued a red alert for the entire country. OCHA and the United Nations Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, had activated a joint operation and response centre. An evacuation assessment had also started yesterday, and a public awareness campaign was currently being conducted.

Humanitarian actors were mobilizing additional resources in case weather forecasts materialized and translated into heavy flooding and landslides in the greater north of the country, that is, Artibonite, Centre, Nord-East, Nord, Nord-Ouest. In the northern town of Gonaives, the components of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti – including police and engineers – were ready to intervene at any time if needed. The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service, UNHAS, had also been activated, and a helicopter and an airplane could be available within 48 to 72 hours.

There were more than 100,000 shelters in stock in Haiti, and more were available from the regional stocks in Panama. Some 360 evacuation sites had been identified in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area where 50,000 individuals could be hosted for 48 hours. Health partners had dispatched emergency medical kits to the northern areas, enough for 10,000 people for three months.

In Puerto Rico, 800,000 people had been without electricity and 100,000 without water for a few hours, while more than 770 people were in shelters and numerous trees and power lines had been downed.

The Dominican Republic had seen torrential rains in the northern provinces since noon yesterday. The authorities were concerned about the buffering capacity of some dams and mandatory evacuations were in place in these areas. Temporary shelters would also be open in Turk and Caicos and the Bahamas during the time the hurricane may hit.

Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme (WFP) said that WFP was also on alert in Haiti as much rain and wind was expected in the North, Centre and West of the country. The organization had sent staff and lorries to Hinche, Port-de-Paix and Fort-Liberté, pre-positioning food there as road conditions were poor and would further deteriorate with the onset of rains. There were now 7,000 tons of food for the 717,000 inhabitants, pre-positioned at 35 places, in order to be able to respond to the people’s needs during 26 days.

New WMO Antarctic Ozone Bulletin

Ms. Nullis said that signs of ozone depletion had appeared over the Antarctic, according to WMO’s first Antarctic Ozone Bulletin of the 2011 series, a bulletin issued every three to four weeks during the Antarctic ozone hole period. Temperature conditions and the extent of polar stratospheric clouds - which influenced the extent of the ozone hole – indicated that the degree of ozone loss this year would most likely be about average in comparison to the past decade. However, it was still too early to make a definitive statement.

In mid-August, the ozone hole area had been normal compared to recent years, slightly larger than in 2008 and 2010 but smaller than in 2009. But WMO expected the rate of depletion to pick up as the weeks progressed.

The link to the New WMO Antarctic Ozone Bulletin would be posted on WMO’s website later today.

Libya

Mr. Chauzy said that an IOM-chartered ship had left Benghazi yesterday morning and had been supposed to dock in Tripoli later today. However, due to security conditions in the port which were not optimum the docking had been delayed. IOM would maintain the ship off the coast of Tripoli until the conditions were right to dock. There were many demands from stranded migrants and third country nationals who were in Tripoli, some of whom had been registered by their embassies, including several thousand Bengladeshis, Philippinos and Egyptians who were ready to leave. IOM was calling on all parties to the conflict to allow it to carry out this humanitarian evacuation programme in safety and to allow those migrants who wanted to leave to do so in safety.



Ms. Berthiaume said that the shops and pharmacies in the Libyan capital Tripoli were closed and the prices of food commodities were increasing, notably due to the lack of fuel. WFP hoped to re-establish its presence in Tripoli as soon as the security condition allowed. The events in Libya provided WFP with access to regions it had been unable to access previously, including Zliten and Gharyan, where violent clashes had taken place over the last weeks.

WFP was currently chartering a boat in Benghazi with 500 tons of food destined to 150,000 people in Zliten and an interagency mission would visit Zliten on 24 August to assess the situation and needs in this area which had previously been inaccessible to humanitarian agencies. WFP was planning to reach Gharyan, 80 kilometers south of Tripoli, with around 487 metric tons of food assistance which had been pre-positioned in southern Tunisia and was destined to 30,000 people. WFP was seeking to reach Gharyan via the Ras Ajdir border crossing in Tunisia, the main supply route to Tripoli.

As the lead agency of the United Nations logistics cluster for the Libyan crisis, WFP had chartered a vessel to transport passengers and humanitarian cargo between Benghazi and Misrata. Since the vessel’s first voyage on 1 July, 311 passengers and over 3,231 m3 of interagency cargo had been transported. WFP had also launched humanitarian air service flights on 1 May between Malta, Cairo, Tunisia, Benghazi and Crete. Since then, the organization had carried more than 2,200 passengers on 55 flights.

While WFP was planning to extend its emergency assistance operation in Libya until February 2012, its North Africa emergency operation in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt was currently facing a $ 30.5 million shortfall, Ms. Berthiaume underscored.

Other

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Conference on Disarmament had this morning opened a public meeting marking the start of the Cuban presidency, and the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Mr. Abelardo Moreno Fernandez, was currently addressing the Conference. The summary of the meeting, to be distributed by the Information Service, would indicate the date of the next public meeting of the Conference.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was concluding its review of the report of Albania this morning. This afternoon, and until tomorrow morning, the Committee would examine the report of the United Kingdom, before reviewing that of Malta, the last country programmed for this session.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the 2011 Report on UNCTAD's assistance to the Palestinian people would be presented at a press conference today at noon in Room III.

Ms. Momal-Vanian said that the Human Rights Council had adopted a resolution on Syria with 33 votes in favour, 4 against and 9 abstentions, thus concluding the special session it had started yesterday.