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 World Health Organization, the Universal Postal Union and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Spokespersons from the United Nations Refugee Agency, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Meteorological Organization were also present, but had no announcements to make.

Arrest of Radovan Karadžiæ

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that, in a statement, the Secretary-General had welcomed the arrest of Radovan Karadžiæ, former President of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, yesterday. The Secretary-General had commended the Serbian authorities for that decisive step towards ending impunity for those indicted for serious violations of international humanitarian law during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. That important and timely arrest would enable the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to move closer to completing its mandate, and bring justice to the perpetrators and the victims of the serious international crimes committed, the Secretary-General had said. Noting that “ending impunity is an essential element for achieving sustainable peace and justice in the region”, Mr. Ban Ki-moon added that, while the arrest was an important milestone, the work of the International Tribunal would not be complete until all fugitives have been arrested and tried. The Secretary-General’s statement was available in the Press Room.

For his part, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Serge Brammertz, had also welcomed the arrest Monday of the former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžiæ, who had been a fugitive for 13 years, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said. In a press statement, Mr. Brammertz had said that the arrest of Mr. Karadziæ represented a “milestone in cooperation” with the International Tribunal, and he had congratulated the efforts of Serbian authorities, in particular those of the National Security Council, the team charged with tracking fugitives and the office of the Prosecutor tasked with investigating war crimes. “It is an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice,” Mr. Brammertz had added.

Cyclone Nargis Joint Assessment Report

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said she had placed in the Press Room the statement by the Secretary-General on the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment Final Report on the damage wrought by the passage of Cyclone Nargis. The report, issued yesterday by the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), confirmed that by early June some 1.3 million people had been reached with some form of assistance, and that a second wave of deaths from disease and starvation had not occurred. The report also highlighted that the revised Appeal for $482 million, which had been launched on 10 July in New York, was still some $300 million short of the funds needed to provide assistance up to April 2009.

Fadéla Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said available at the back of the room was a Mynamar Donor Update. She then gave the floor to a colleague who had been part of the WHO assessment team sent to Myanmar following the passage of Cyclone Nargis.

Richard Garfield of the Health and Nutrition Tracking Service at WHO said that there had never been as a comprehensive an assessment in all areas affected by a disaster in a two-month period as was now available for Myanmar. ASEAN, together with the World Bank and the United Nations had made a partnership with the Government to do both a comprehensive field assessment, the Village Track Assessment –which he had helped to organize and run – and a Damage and Loss Assessment, which had been led by the World Bank. Together, those two assessments made up the report which Under-Secretary-General John Holmes and the Presdient of ASEAN had released yesterday. The work for the report had been done during the three weeks immediately after the Government of Myanmar had decided to open its doors to the United Nations and ASEAN.

For the comprehensive field assessment, the team had reached all of their target 291 communities, geographically spread throughout the whole region, Mr. Garfield said. That meant that for the first time in the United Nations humanitarian reform movement they would be able to track over the next year how people were doing; how quickly or slowly improvements occurred; when they reached conditions that they had enjoyed prior to the time Nargis had hit; when they were better than that; and what role the United Nations and international non-governmental organizations had in bringing that about.

In highlights of the report’s findings, Mr. Garfield said that, although a lot of what they found was what one would expect, “to our surprise people had good access to health services, with 80 per cent having a health service available within one hour of their home”. Nevertheless, the services had gone down radically. Immunizations, prenatal care and delivery care had all dropped since the cyclone. Seven weeks after the cyclone, the emergency health needs that had been prominent in the first days had gone and they had seen regular, common health problems at a higher level than before. Another surprise had been that, although services had gone down, there were a lot more health workers now in the affected regions. They had not understood that the Government of Myanmar had moved lots of physicians and nurses into the region and people reported twice as many health workers around than before.

There were also many more non-governmental organization people present – although Mr. Garfield stresssed that although that presence had increased it had only increased from 1 per cent of people having access to them to 5 per cent. Their job now was to rebuild services and centres, with some 45 per cent of health facilities destroyed in the delta, to help to equip those centres, to train the national health workers, and to help them to improve their communications and supply systems. They expected that within one year those facilities and systems would be considerably improved over the level in that region prior to the passage of Cyclone Nargis.

This was the first time that a regional political organization had brokered a deal to create humanitarian access. Humanitarian access was becoming more and more of a problem around the world, and it had been a big problem in Myanmar. Today it was not. “They let us go everywhere. We never had to clear flight plans with them, and we were able to reach every community that we targeted without Government interference”, Mr. Garfield underscored.

Asked why the second wave of health crises that had been predicted in Myanmar had never materialized and whether that was an indication that the health services on the ground were actually not so bad, Mr. Garfield said no. Overall, conditions before the cyclone were about average for rural Myanmar – which was to say among the worst in South East Asia. Conditions got much worse after the cyclone. What they had discovered during the assessment, however, was that there had been a good deal more of a response in the country from national assets and resources than they had known about before. Epidemics were often feared after catastrophic events, but the fact that the disaster had not created refugee areas where people were crowded without facilities and had instead occurred over dispersed rural communities where the people were able to stay, also played into the good outcome.

Geneva Activities

Turning to activities in Geneva, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier noted that this Friday the Human Rights Committee would conclude its seventy-third session. As usual, the concluding observations on the countries considered at the session – the United Kingdom, France, San Marino and Ireland – as well as round-up releases in French and English, would be available following the closing.

24th Universal Postal Congress

Regarding the agenda of the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that, on Monday at 3 p.m. he would deliver a message from the Secretary-General at the opening of the Universal Postal Congress, which would be held in Geneva starting on 23 July, before addressing gathered delegates in his own capacity as head of the United Nations in Geneva.

Rhéal Leblanc of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) said that, as mentioned, tomorrow the Universal Postal Congress would open in Geneva and would run for three weeks until 12 August 2008, with more than 2,200 participants expected. Today at 11.30 a.m. there was a press conference in this same room to provide more information on subjects being covered at the Congress. Participating would be Edouard Dayan, Director General of the Universal Postal Union; Ambassador Bishar A. Hussein, Chairman-designate of the twenty-fourth Universal Postal Congress; José Anson, Economist at the UPU International Bureau; and Paul Donohoe, eBusiness manager at the UPU International Bureau.

Other

Rupert Colville of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced the ratification yesterday by Papua New Guinea of the two key international human rights treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Those ratifications would enter into force after 90 days. Papua New Guinea was the one hundred and sixty-second State to accede to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the one hundred and fifty-ninth to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A press briefing note was available at the back of the room.