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 was also addressed by Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN Refugee Agency, the World Health Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the International Organization for Migration, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and the World Trade Organization.

Events in New York

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Secretary-General yesterday had a press encounter outside the Security Council. The transcript of the Secretary-General’s remarks was available in the press room. Also available was the Secretary-General’s message to the International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East which was being held in Moscow on the theme of “New Challenges in the Middle East Peace Process and Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue”.

The General Assembly had yesterday elected by acclamation Haya Rashed Al Khalifa of Bahrain as the President of its sixty-first session which was scheduled to begin on 12 September. Ms. Al Khalifa would be the third female President of the Assembly and the first one since 1969. Copies of her biography were available in the Documentation Centre.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said Serge Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, had yesterday received the credentials of Anton Pinter, the new Permanent Representative of Slovakia to the United Nations Office at Geneva, and Franciscos Verros, the new Permanent Representative of Greece to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

The Conference on Disarmament had yesterday held a structured discussion on the prevention of an arms race in outer space, hearing from more than 20 speakers. The next plenary would be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 13 June, during which the Conference would discuss transparency and confidence-building measures in outer space. Ambassador Valery Loshchinin of the Russian Federation was holding the rotating presidency of the Conference on Disarmament during the month of June. Copies of the press release in English and in French on yesterday’s plenary were available in the press room.

Human Rights

José Luis Díaz of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Special Rapporteur on racism and racial discrimination Doudou Diène would be visiting the Russian Federation from 12 to 17 June. The Special Rapporteur would visit Moscow and St. Petersburg and would meet with representatives of the Russian Government at the national and local levels, with members of the legislative and judiciary branches, and also with non-governmental organizations and individuals. Mr. Diène would report to the General Assembly on his findings as a result of the visit and the final report would be submitted to the new Human Rights Council.

Mr. Díaz reminded journalists that the Human Rights Council would be starting on 19 June at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. All the Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts previously appointed by the Commission on Human Rights would be meeting in Geneva in a parallel meeting from 19 to 23 June. He expected to have soon a list of the Experts who had confirmed their attendance and it would be made available to the press so that interviews could be set up.

In response to a question, Mr. Díaz said that this was the regular annual meeting of the Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts during which they discussed developments in the human rights field and their methods of work. They were not in Geneva specifically to attend the meetings of the Human Rights Council.

Asked whether the Special Rapporteurs and Experts would present their reports to the Council or whether it would be holding a mainly procedural meeting, Mr. Díaz said there were still ongoing consultations on exactly what was going to happen at the first session of the Council. It was already known that there would be a high-level segment of the Council for the first four days. As for the rest, it was necessary to wait until the end of the consultations to have a clearer idea on what the Council would be doing for the rest of its two-week session. Although it was not certain, he did not think that the Council would hear presentations of reports from Special Rapporteurs at this session.

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that there would be a background briefing on 15 June on the upcoming session of the Human Rights Council.

Responding to a question on the high-level segment, Mr. Díaz said this would be similar to the high-level segment held by the Commission on Human Rights during its first few days, hearing from Ministers or Heads of State coming from many countries to speak on human rights.

Concerning the visit of the Special Rapporteur to the Russian Federation, Mr. Díaz said there had been a serious rise in the number of racist attacks in the Russian Federation, including murder, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg which were the cities the Special Rapporteur would visit. This would be the main subject of concern. There were a number of other issues. As Russia was made up of a number of different nationalities, the issue of migration within Russia and from the outside into Russia would also be discussed.

In response to another question, Mr. Díaz said the High Commissioner for Human Rights had raised the issue of racial discrimination many times and she continued to do so whenever necessary or whenever the situation arose. The High Commissioner’s Office had a Unit which was devoted only to racial issues, it was called the anti-discrimination unit. A certain numbers of mechanisms of the UN human rights system, including the Special Rapporteur against racism and the Committee against Racial Discrimination, worked with groups created following the Durban Racial Discrimination Conference in Durban in 2001. They met regularly in Geneva. He also recalled that this year, when the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was commemorated on 21 March, there had been a week of activities and discussions on the problem of racism, with the participation of the High Commissioner, the Special Rapporteur and other experts. Thus he did not think that it was fair to say the United Nations and the Office of the High Commissioner were passive towards the issue of racism.

In response to a question on a private communication concerning the presence of the former President of Chad in Senegal, in which the Committee against Torture said Senegal had not fulfilled its obligations under the Convention against Torture, Mr. Díaz said the Committee had communicated its decision to Senegal on 18 May through the Senegalese Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva. Senegal had 90 days to respond to the decision.

Timor-Leste

Damien Personnaz of the United Nations Children’s Fund said UNICEF had launched an appeal for Timor-Leste for $ 2.6 million which would cover UNICEF’s programmes in the country until the end of August. There were 66,000 persons displaced in camps by the unrest, including 32,000 children under the age of 15.

Vincent Lusser of the International Committee of the Red Cross said ICRC was working with the local Red Cross in Timor-Leste. The violence in the country was subsiding and the situation was slowly improving, but displaced persons were still not returning home. The people left the camps during the day but returned there to spend the night. Clean drinking water remained a priority need. ICRC was also working to help people find their families in the camps. There did not seem to be a problem with unaccompanied children, and only four or five cases had been seen.

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said that in Timor-Leste, 60 per cent of deaths of children were caused by infectious diseases. For example, concerning children under the age of five, the main causes of death were malaria, deng fever, acute respiratory diseases and diarrhoeal diseases. Malaria and tuberculosis were main public health problems around the country. Less than one third of the population of Timor-Leste had access to health care and less than half had access to clean drinking water. There were serious shortages of medication and health care workers. The level of vaccination was also very low.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR urgently needed $ 4.8 million for its operation to help tens of thousands of displaced persons in Timor-Leste. So far, funds had been slow in arriving. UNHCR hoped that the launch of the UN Flash Appeal shortly would be responded to generously.

Other

Damien Personnaz of the United Nations Children’s Fund said that UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow was returning to Darfur on Sunday, 11 June, accompanied by her son, Ronan, a UNICEF Spokesperson for Youth. Ms. Farrow would highlight the need for increased funding from the international community. Available at the back of the room was a media advisory on the visit with more details. Ms. Farrow visited Darfur in November 2004.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said heavy rains that started on 21 May had caused severe flash floods and landslides in five provinces in northern Thailand. Agricultural lands in more than 100 villages near the Yom River remained under water. To date, there were 83 deaths and 33 missing persons and 340,000 persons had been affected. OCHA had released $ 51,000 in emergency cash grants for the purchase of relief supplies and materials for temporary shelter and the United Nations Development Programme had also released $ 50,000. A press release with more details was available.

Concerning the appeal for the victims of the earthquake in Indonesia, which was launched last week for $ 103 million, Ms. Byrs said OCHA had received $ 35 million in contributions and $ 30 million had been pledged.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR was today releasing its annual global count of uprooted people of concern to UNHCR around the world. While the number of refugees worldwide had reached a 26-year low, the total of concern to UNHCR actually rose last year to nearly 21 million, primarily because of its expanding role in caring for the world’s internally displaced. The “2005 Global Refugee Trends” report said that despite a drop in refugee totals from 9.5 million in 2004 to 8.4 million last year, the overall number of concern to UNHCR had increased by 1.3 million, from 19.5 million to 20.8 million. Available were copies of the report and a press release.

Mr. Redmond said that on concluding a four-day mission to Ecuador, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Operations Judy Cheng-Hopkins had called for more international attention to be paid to the humanitarian impact of the Colombian conflict on the whole region. With more than 2 million internally displaced persons, Colombia was now the country with the largest population of uprooted people of concern to UNHCR in the world.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said IOM, the MTV Europe Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) were today launching a Public Service Announcement (PSA) to raise awareness among football fans that many women would be trafficked into Germany and forced into sexual slavery to meet an increased demand for prostitution during this year’s World Cup. IOM estimated that some 200,000 people were trafficked into and within Europe every year, the majority of them women and girls for sexual exploitation. And with World Cup fever taking hold in Cote d’Ivoire, a new IOM initiative aimed to bring together football fans from all parts of the country around giant television screens in an effort to promote peace in the war-divided country.

In Ecuador, Mr. Chauzy said the IOM office had launched an information campaign to raise awareness and promote the development of local policies to prevent human trafficking in Ecuador's northern border. And in Geneva, migration and political rights experts would meet next week to discuss the unique challenges faced by persons displaced by conflict in the realm of political rights.

Brigitte Leone of the International Strategy of Disaster Reduction said that at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 13 June, Salvano Briceno, Director of the Inter-agency Secretariat of ISDR, would hold a press conference to launch the two-year education campaign with UNESCO entitled “disaster prevention begins at school”. Out of 200 million persons who were affected by natural disasters annually, a quarter were children.

Hans Von Rohland of the International Labour Organization said that as the work of the International Labour Conference continued, there would be a briefing this afternoon at 4 p.m. on progress towards the elimination of child labour. There would also be a round table at 2 p.m. to discuss progress on the elimination of child labour in Turkey, Tanzania and Brazil.

Aurelia Blin of the World Trade Organization said there would be a briefing on Monday, 12 June, on the agriculture negotiations. There would be another briefing on the same subject on Friday, 16 June. Meetings concerning the issue of intellectual property would also be held next week.