REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i. of the UN Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was attended by the Spokespersons for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Organization for Migration and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Ebola

Christophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that Liberia was conducting its first polio and measles immunization campaign since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak. Mr. Boulierac explained this campaign had been scheduled for the previous year, but had to be suspended because of the Ebola outbreak. It aimed at vaccinating over 683,000 children against polio and 603,000 against measles. Mr. Boulierac added that the campaign was led by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Centres for Disease Control as well as UNICEF and the WHO. A major social effort was put in place to convince the local leaders and communities of the need to have their children vaccinated. Once again, NGOs and different religious and traditional leaders were playing a key role in this effort.

Answering a question regarding the population associating Ebola with the ongoing vaccination campaign, Mr. Boulierac explained that the fear was of course still a factor in those three countries and some people did not visit health centres much because they were probably afraid. UNICEF was working a lot on that question and social mobilization could be very useful in that regard.

Dr. Margaret Harris, for the World Health Organization (WHO), reminded that during the Ebola outbreak in the three affected countries services had been overwhelmed and parents had been concerned about health centers associated with Ebola. That had kept parents away from having their children vaccinated, and therefore, at that time, many children had not been vaccinated for over a year. Dr. Harris informed that the WHO was looking at conducting a mass vaccination campaign to ensure that children were not missing out vaccination against measles and polio. That campaign should be conducted safely without any Ebola transmission risks.

On the Liberian vaccination coverage before the Ebola outbreak, Dr. Harris answered that they did not have exact numbers because of the massive disruption of the services, but in any case they would have decreased following the outbreak.

Answering a question on how many children the WHO intended to vaccinate in the campaign against polio and measles, Dr. Harris said that the campaign aimed to vaccinate 683,000 children against polio and 600,300 children against measles.

Asked whether Liberia would be declared Ebola-free on 9 May, and if measures would be put in place to prevent other cases from irrupting, Dr. Harris explained that the Liberian Government would make the formal declaration once the date was reached. She also stated that the WHO would maintain the level of staffing and presence on the ground as an important part of the measures implemented to maintain vigilance.

Responding to a question on the risk of a new outbreak of Ebola because of sexual transmission, Dr. Harris said that a statement would be sent by the WHO, being prepared by their scientists, to ascertain whether that would be a possibility and what to do about it. The position was that sexual transmission of the Ebola virus was a strong possibility, but that had not been proven at that time. WHO recommended abstinence during the recovery period.

Asked if the WHO would make a similar declaration on 9 May as they had done in Senegal in October, Ms. Harris said that statements were all different depending on each country, and that the country would declare first if it became Ebola-free. The WHO would be in Monrovia on 9 May for the ceremony with the Liberian President, and after that, they would put their statement on their website around mid-day.

Christian Lindmeier, also for the WHO, informed that the WHO’s Director-General had commissioned a panel of outside independent experts to undertake an assessment on all aspects of WHO’s response in the Ebola outbreak. On 11 May, the panel’s first report would be shared with Member States in advance of the World Health Assembly. The Chair of the Panel would present the Panel’s first report to journalists on the afternoon of 11 May. Panel Chair Barbara Stocking, President of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, would address the media in Room III on 11 May at 3 p.m.

Yemen

Mr. Boulierac stated that if the restrictions on commercial imports of fuel and food were to continue, according to the projections, there would be more children who would die because of that than because of bombs and bullets. Mr. Boulierac added that the causes for this were related to the fact that 120,000 additional children were at immediate risk of suffering from severe malnutrition in the coming three months if health and hygiene services would not function normally with fuel, and 2.5 million children under five were at immediate risks of diarrhoea, which could lead to malnutrition problems and deaths of children. 1.2 million children were likely to suffer from preventable diseases such as pneumonia and measles as vaccination campaigns have stopped. Mobile health clinics teams could not provide services to communities anymore because of the lack of fuel and estimates showed that the country could run out of fuel within a week.

Mr. Boulierac also indicated that to date, UNICEF has successfully delivered 202 metric tonnes of lifesaving supplies to nearly 1 million people across the country. He explained that the humanitarian access was difficult in the country, considering that many roads and bridges linking main cities had been destroyed and that some humanitarian workers had also been attacked. All parties to the conflict should give total access to humanitarian workers to the area they control so that humanitarian assistance could be delivered to the most affected areas.

The fact commercial ships could not deliver food and oil could kill more children than bullets and fighting alone. Asked to specify how many children were at risk of dying, Mr. Boulierac said that UNICEF was not in a position to assess exact numbers. But he added the situation was deteriorating with 120,000 additional children at the immediate risk of suffering from acute malnutrition in the coming months; 2.5 million children under the age of five were at risk of diarrheal disease and 1.2 million were likely to suffer from preventable diseases. Asked where the children were at risk, Mr. Boulierac responded that the risks for children still existed everywhere around the country.

Mr. Lindmeier added that there had been reports of 484 suspected cases of dengue fever, with two reported deaths thus far. WHO had provided IV fluids, which could not be sent to the two districts in need. It was impossible to confirm the cases without lab testing. The affected districts were in close contact with the WHO, and the WHO was trying to send rapid diagnostic kits for both dengue and malaria. Between 19 March and 4 May, Mr. Lindmeier reported, there had been 1,439 deaths and 5,951 injuries, including 71 children deaths.

Regarding the alleged poisoning of water sources, which had been raised the previous week, Mr. Lindmeier said that the findings so far were that the main pipeline had been broken and subsequently repaired and chlorine. The water was not found to be poisoned.

On the prognosis for a humanitarian pause, Mr. Fawzi confirmed that negotiations were indeed going on at the moment, the Secretary-General was in contact with the Secretary of State Kerry who in turn was talking to the Saudi Arabian authorities.

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that regular commercial imports of fuel were the main issue, and those had to increase. The main obstacle was the inspection regime, put into place by the Security Council resolution. That had a crippling effect on humanitarian operations. The end result was that there was too little fuel coming into the country; 90 percent of the country depended on their food from imports. He could not provide information on how many fuel stations in the country were controlled by the Houthis.

Burundi

Elisabeth Byrs, for the World Food Programme (WFP), stated that the WFP was concerned that the political crisis in Burundi could lead to a humanitarian crisis. It was already causing tens of thousands of people to flee to neighbouring countries, and could affect food security inside Burundi.

WFP was providing food and nutrition assistance to more than 25,000 Burundian refugees who had fled to Rwanda, and that number was growing. WFP and other humanitarian partners were preparing potentially to assist up to 50,000 to 100,000 refugees in Rwanda if necessary, but their resources were already being stretched by the influx. WFP was also prepared to assist people inside Burundi who were affected by the crisis if needed.

In Rwanda, the WFP was on the ground in a new transit camp and three transit centres providing food assistance to Burundian refugees, starting with High Energy Biscuits. WFP provided hot meals to refugees in the transit centres and continued with the general food distribution once they moved to the new transit camp at Mahama. A quarter of the children in the transit camp were malnourished. Moderately acute malnourished children were receiving ready-to-use supplementary food – specialized food supplements from WFP to help them recover. Additionally, the WFP would start blanket supplementary feeding for all young children as soon as possible to avert any further deterioration of refugees’ nutritional status.

Turning to the challenges that the WFP was facing, Ms. Byrs said that the WFP in Rwanda did not have enough resources to respond to the food needs of the increasing number of refugees from Burundi. The agency had been able to mobilize some emergency funding, allowing them to immediately respond to the initial needs, but that was not enough to sustain assistance, especially if the number of refugees kept rising. WFP urgently needed a minimum of USD 5 million to meet food needs of 50,000 to 100,000 refugees who could arrive in the coming six months.

Adrian Edwards, for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said that since Burundi’s civil war had ended in 2005, it had seen some of the most promising developments in recent refugee history in Africa. Solutions to the plight of many thousands of formerly displaced people had been found over a decade of conflict. Thousands had been resettled overseas.

Since the eruption of pre-election violence in mid-April, however, there had been alarming signs that that progress was being undone. Over the previous weeks, more than 50,000 Burundians had fled to neighbouring Rwanda, Tanzania and the DRC. Women and children were in the majority. In Burundi’s capital Bujumbura, protests had resumed this week, and there were reports of daily violence. Unrest had been spreading to the provinces as well. In Rwanda, new arrivals had reported fleeing Burundi because of harassment and intimidation by Imbonerakure youth militias. Some decided to leave as a precautionary measure, having experienced previous cycles of violence. There were also reports of people selling their properties before leaving the country.

Many people had experienced difficulties while trying to leave Burundi. Several women had reported threats of rape from armed men, and had had to bribe their way through roadblocks. In the DRC, some 7,660 Burundians had registered as refugees thus far. In Tanzania, the number stood at 4,000, but more than 13,000 were still waiting to be processed.

UNHCR was appealing to the authorities in Burundi to allow people to move freely. It was vital too that borders remained open, and the UNHCR was grateful to commitments in that regard by neighbouring countries and for the support that host communities were giving to the refugees.

Asked if Burundi was preventing people from leaving, Mr. Edwards said that people were having difficulties due to the security situation. Women were at particular risk because of threats of rape. Those fleeing violence clearly needed access to safe havens. On the fear of a backlash against Burundian refugees, Mr. Edwards said that it was crucial that host communities received the support they needed.

Mr. Edwards, answering a question, said that over the previous week, restrictions to enter Tanzania had been eased.

Nepal

Ms. Byrs said two weeks into the earthquake relief operation, the WFP was warning that food is an increasingly urgent need as it overcomes severe logistical challenges to reach hundreds of thousands of survivors in some of the hardest-hit and most remote areas of Nepal.

WFP, with its humanitarian partners, had distributed food for 300,000 people since the earethquake and was bringing in more helicopters and engaging multiple fleets of small trucks to get supplies to hard-hit rural areas where roads were poor or non-existent. WFP was also opening a land route from India to take pressure off Kathmandu airport. But WFP, funded entirely by voluntary contributions from governments, companies and private individuals, was struggling to raise money for this complex and costly operation.

After the initial focus in the relief effort on search and rescue, shelter, water and medical supplies, food was now becoming an increasingly urgent need. Many of those affected in the most remote rural areas were subsistence farmers who had lost the crops that had been harvested just before the earthquake hit. Families urgently needed food to carry them over until the next harvest while they rebuild their lost livelihoods.

WFP’s emergency operations were only four per cent funded so far, with much of the food distributions and common services provided to date enabled by internal resources which are reaching their limit. It was vital that the response from the international community matched the immense needs of the people of Nepal.

Ms. Byrs specified that the WFP needed USD 116.5 million to provide food for 1.4 million people over the next three months. An additional USD 34 million was needed to provide logistics, telecommunications and air services for the humanitarian community.

Mr. Lindmeier said that three district hospitals had been completely damaged and seven others had been partially damaged. Total of 240 primary health posts had also been completely damaged in the 14 worst-affected districts, as of 6 May. There were over 100 active foreign medical teams the moment, 13 of which were coordinated by the Nepal Army. Those teams were providing surgical, obstetrics and in patient services. The Government had asked that no more teams come forward without specific requests. Outstanding needs were related to specialized physical rehabilitation teams. The important task of foreign medical teams was to report on diarrhea and other worrying symptoms. Water samples were being monitored in order to avoid any outbreaks.

Mr. Laerke provided an infographic on who did what where in Nepal. All affected districts had been reached now; 256 agencies were currently working in 42 districts. Total of 1,300 humanitarian activities were undergoing at the moment. It was a very large scale operation.

The Flash Appeal had been slightly revised upward to USD 423 million; it was 6.5 percent funded as of this morning. OCHA was urgently calling on all donors to increase their funding for the appeal.

Bay of Bengal

Mr. Edwards stated that the numbers of sea crossings were increasing across the board, and not only in the Mediterranean. The Bay of Bengal was one of the critical areas, which was in the focus once again after more than 30 bodies had been found in graves in smugglers’ camps in the southern Thai province of Songkhla. The bodies were said to be of people originating from Myanmar and Bangladesh, who had likely died from illness or abuse.

UNHCR welcomed the fact that the Thai police were investigating the issue, and hoped that the culprits would be identified and brought to justice. Smuggling networks by sea from the Bay of Bengal area to Thailand and onwards to Malaysia had become increasingly lucrative for smugglers and increasingly dangerous for passengers. Despite the risks, the number of people using those routes had recently been on the rise. A recent estimate said that 25,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis had boarded smugglers’ boats between January and March 2015, almost the double of the figure in the same period of 2014.

Mr. Edwards informed that UNHCR staff had spoken to several hundred survivors of such journeys during the reporting period. Initial boarding fees were often low and in some cases people were given free-passage on condition that they repaid the debt with future earnings in Malaysia. False promises of work and even small cash incentives might be offered. Those who changed their mind and asked to be let off the boats were normally forced to remain.

Based on survivor accounts, an estimated 300 people had died at sea in the first quarter of 2015 as a result of starvation, dehydration and abuse by boat crews. Conditions in the smugglers’ camps were horrific. People were held and abused until their relatives paid for their release. Beatings were common and there were reports of rapes. According to a local NGO, currently several thousand people could be held in “offshore camps”. Those who eventually made it to Malaysia were in bad shape.

With people rescued from the smugglers’ camps in Thailand, the UNHCR assisted by providing clothes, blankets, hygiene kits and other relief. In Malaysia, the UNHCR conducted protection monitoring in Rohingya communities and intervened for the release of those known to be in detention for arriving irregularly. UNHCR called on countries in the region to work more closely together to counter the smuggling and trafficking of vulnerable people. Law enforcement measures had to be accompanied by efforts to reduce the need for migrants and refugees to turn to smugglers in the first place, including by addressing the root causes driving people to undertake those dangerous journeys and providing them with safe alternatives.

Mediterranean crossings

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), stated that the IOM was calling for an international investigation of recent Mediterranean shipwrecks in light of the discovery the previous day of a sunken vessel believed to contain the remains of hundreds of victims, who had drowned the previous month.

Italian authorities reported that a nautical robot had probed a damaged vessel discovered at a depth of 375 meters, some 85 nautical miles northeast of Libya's coastline. Authorities believed that it was the same craft lost on 18 April, with as many as 800 passengers on board, according to 28 survivors later evacuated to Italy.

The shipwreck, 25 meters in length, appeared in high resolution sonar images rendered by the robot probe to have a hull damaged by a larger ship - possibly one involved in the initial rescue. There were unconfirmed reports that at least one body had been discovered during the probe, and that others might be visible inside the sunken vessel.

Madagascar

Ms. Byrs informed that a press release on the WFP reinforcing its assistance to Madagascar was available.

Geneva activities

Mr. Fawzi announced that the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review Working Group was reviewing the human rights record of Honduras this morning. In the afternoon, the Working Group would adopt a series of reports for reviews which had taken place earlier in the week: Belarus, Liberia, Malawi, Mongolia, Panama and the Maldives.

On 11 May, the UPR Working Group would review the human rights record of the United States starting at 9 a.m. in Room XX. In the afternoon it would review the Marshall Islands.

UNOG Director-General a.i. would be meeting with the Global Alliance against Female Genital Mutilation on 11 May, as part of the large campaign against FGM.

Catherine Huissoud, for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), informed that a press conference would take place in Press Room I at 2:30 p.m. on 13 May, when UNCTAD and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific would present its annual survey of Asia and the Pacific. The speaker would be Alfredo Calcagno, Head of the Macroeconomic and Development Policies Branch, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, at UNCTAD. The survey would be under embargo until 5:00 a.m. on 14 May.

Edward Harris, for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said that a diplomatic conference on the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration would take place in the new conference hall at WIPO from 11 to 21 May. Discussions included proposed adjustments to the Lisbon system, which was the international registration system providing protection for names connected to the geographic origin of products.. More information was available in hard copy. The diplomatic conference would commence at 10 a.m. on 11 May, and journalists were advised to arrive early. Suggestion was made to hold a briefing on the background of the Lisbon Agreement.

Mr. Fawzi reminded that the UNDP would launch the 2015 Global Burden of Armed Violence Report, at a press conference in Room III at 11:30 a.m. today. Speakers would be Neil Buhne, Director of UNDP Geneva Office, and Anna Alvazzi del Frate, Small Arms Survey Research Director.

Today, at 3:00 p.m. in Room III, the High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein would address sexual abuse in foreign military operations.

Mr. Fawzi informed that the Assistant Secretary-General for the Cholera Response in Haiti, Pedro Medrano Rojas, would be in Geneva on 11, 12 and 13 May, and would be available for interviews. ASG Medrano might also attend the press briefing on 12 May. [It later transpired that Mr. Medrano would not be at the briefing on Tuesday.]

Mr. Lindmeier said that the WHO today published today the new list of essential medicines, which included ground-breaking new treatments for hepatitis C, a variety of cancers and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, among others. The move opened the way to improve access to innovative medicine that showed clear clinical benefits and could have enormous public health impact globally.

Spokespersons for the International Labour Organization and the United Nations Development Programme were also present, but did not brief.
The webcast for this briefing is available here: … http://bit.ly/unog080515