REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i. of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by spokespersons for the International Organization for Migration and the World Health Organization.

Geneva Activities

The Conference on Disarmament was meeting in public this morning, said Mr. Fawzi. The next plenary would be at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 25 August 2015.

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was today considering the report of Gabon, following reviews of Kenya and Ukraine earlier this week. The reports of Mauritius, Brazil, Qatar and the European Union would be reviewed next week. A background press release is available here.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was meeting in private until Friday 28 August, when there would be a public meeting to close the session and issue the Committee’s concluding observations for the reports of Colombia, Costa Rica, Niger, Suriname, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Czech Republic, Norway and Netherlands. A background press release is available here.

International Health Regulations

Tarik Jašareviæ, for the World Health Organization (WHO), announced that a virtual press conference would take place at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, 25 August 2015, on the outcomes of the first meeting of the Review Committee on the Role of the 2005 International Health Regulations in the Ebola Outbreak and Response. The meeting itself would start on Monday, 24 August, and was open to the public and would be webcast live, he noted.

Dr. Rüdiger Krech, Director of the Secretariat of the International Health Regulations Review Committee at the World Health Organization (WHO), briefed the press about the first meeting of the Review Committee on the Role of the 2005 International Health Regulations in the Ebola Outbreak and Response. The International Health Regulations were important as they were the legally-binding background for all Member States in how they prevented and responded to epidemics, he informed the press, saying they may remember the regulations being used for the H1N1, polio and most recently, Ebola outbreaks.

The International Health Regulations set out the way in which Member States notified the WHO of an outbreak, and how capacity was then built up to survey and react to the crisis. The regulations, which were agreed in 2005, had in general worked well, said Dr. Krech, and WHO had received over 100 notifications of plagues and epidemics from around the world as a result. However, the Ebola crisis showed the weaknesses in the regulations, and the Committee had been tasked to review them to enable Member States, the WHO and the international community in general to respond more effectively to the next epidemic.

Asked about the timeline and whether the meeting would focus on Ebola, Dr. Krech said the Committee was expected to have a final conclusion by May 2016, in time for the next World Health Assembly. The world could not wait any longer to be ready for the next outbreak, he said. Dr. Krech confirmed that the first meeting would largely cover the Ebola crisis, looking at lessons learned.

Mediterranean Migrants

Joel Millman, for the International Organization on Migration (IOM), gave an update on the situation of migrants in the Mediterranean, focusing on Greece. Mr. Millman
referred to new infographics from IOM using Frontex data. Yesterday Frontex announced there had been 107,000 irregular entries in the month of July, setting a new record for irregular entries in one month and bringing the total of irregular entries into Europe by all routes, including land and sea, so far in 2015, to 340,000. He added that since 1 June, 138,000 migrants had arrived on Aegean Sea islands in Greece, and 31,000 migrants had been rescued at sea by Turkish borders authorities.

Mr. Millman noted that IOM would make a statement later today on migrants in The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. These would be available online at http://www.iom.int/press-room.

Responding to a question about the request by some European Union countries to only allow in Christian migrants, Mr. Millman emphasized that IOM opposed every type of racial, religious or ethnical discrimination.