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 Universal Postal Union, the World Meteorological Organization, the UN Refugee Agency, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Secretary-General

Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the Secretary-General would conclude his trip to Mexico today. He would be back in New York this afternoon. Available in the Press Room were his opening address to the Seventeenth International AIDS Conference, as well as his remarks made at the extraordinary session of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, known by its Spanish acronym, OPANAL.

Geneva Activities

In Geneva, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier noted that this morning the Conference on Disarmament had held a public plenary, hearing from Ambassador Clemencia Forero Ucros of Colombia. The next public meeting of the Conference would be held on Thursday, 14 August, at 10 a.m.

Yesterday, the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council had opened its first session, which would run until 15 August, electing Miguel Alfonso Martínez of Cuba as Chairperson. Elected as Vice-Chairpersons were Mona Zulficar from Egypt; Vladimir Kartashkin from the Russian Federation; and Chung Chinsung from the Republic of Korea. Emmanuel Decaux of France was elected Rapporteur. During the rest of this week, the Advisory Committee was scheduled to discuss several issues related to its organization of work before turning to consideration of requests addressed to it by the Council over its past three sessions in the areas of human rights education and training; gender discrimination; the human rights of persons with disabilities; the right to food; the issue of missing persons; and the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy. Press releases, in French and English, were issued twice a day.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in the second week of its three-week session, had yesterday completed its consideration of the report of the Russian Federation, which it had begun on Friday afternoon, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said. Yesterday afternoon and continuing this morning, the Committee was holding a thematic debate with States, non-governmental organizations and other members of the United Nations system on special measures (affirmative action). This afternoon, the Committee would begin its review of the report of Germany.

Finally, at the request of the Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier announced the publication of UNECE’s Forest Product Annual Market Review, 2007-2008. A press release in English and French was available now in the Press Room.

24th Universal Postal Congress

Laurent Widmer of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) noted that the twenty-fourth Universal Postal Congress was continuing at the International Conference Centre until 12 August. Tomorrow elections for UPU Director General and Deputy Director General would be held; current Director General Edouard Dayan and Deputy Director Guozhong Huang were both running for second terms and there were no other candidates for those posts. Also tomorrow elections would be held for the 40-member Council of Administration and the 40-member Postal Operations Council. Kenya would take the Chairmanship of the Council of Administration, and the United Kingdom, Greece and Switzerland were still in the running for the Chair of the Postal Operations Council.

Olympics Weather Forecast

Gaëlle Sévenier of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said available was a press release on WMO cooperation for Beijing 2008 weather forecasts. As was known, weather predictions and characterizations of associated risk were critical to the ceremonies and Games during the Beijing Olympics, beginning on 8 August. As for the two previous Olympics, WMO was coordinating efforts by the host country and other members of WMO to provide timely and accurate weather information. It was expected, as announced by the China Meteorological Administration, that the fengyun-3A satellite, which was the first of its new generation of polar-orbiting meteorological satellites, would be operational during the Beijing Olympics.

Vulnerable Palestinian Refugees Resettled

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that more than two dozen vulnerable Palestinian refugees stranded in the desert in Al Waleed refugee camp on the Iraq-Syria border for the last two years would be leaving the camp in the next few weeks for Iceland. Another group of 155 Palestinians stuck in no-man's land between Syria and Iraq in Al Tanf refugee camp had been accepted for resettlement in Sweden. The two groups included some of the most vulnerable women and children with urgent medical needs requiring immediate attention. An estimated 2,300 Palestinians were living in desperate conditions in the two refugee camps along the Syria-Iraq border, unable to return to Iraq or to cross the borders to neighbouring countries. The health situation of many of those refugees had become increasingly dire, with Palestinian health workers having identified medical conditions ranging from diabetes and birth defects to kidney problems, cancer and serious trauma. The nearest proper medical facility in Iraq was more than 400 kilometres away.

In response to a query about conditions for refugees in Iceland, Mr. Redmond responded that “you would be surprised; Iceland has a long record of resettlement” going back at least a decade or more. Iceland had a very good social network and a good network of national non-governmental organizations.

Georgia/South Ossetia

UNHCR welcomed the adoption by Georgia of an Action Plan for Internally Displaced Persons, which reconfirmed the country’s commitment to address and mitigate the plight of internally displaced persons and to improve their living conditions, Mr. Redmond said. The Action Plan included concrete measures to address the housing situation, as well as the access of the internally displaced to social services and education, and explicitly invited the international community to assist the Government in addressing the needs and protecting the rights of internally displaced persons. UNHCR would be particularly active in the area of finding durable housing solutions for the estimated 273,000 displaced persons in Georgia.

In an unrelated development, Mr. Redmond noted that, over the last two days, nearly 1,100 people, many of them children under 16, had arrived by bus from the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia to North Ossetia-Alania in the Russian Federation. The movement had followed clashes over the weekend, which had included sniper and mortar fire between South Ossetian and Georgian forces. At least six people had been reported killed, and 13 wounded. According to UNHCR’s office in Vladikavkaz, in North Ossetia, none of these recent arrivals were seeking asylum; they had said that they wanted to return home by the end of the summer.

Flooding in Central and Eastern Europe

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said heavy rains and storms, which had started on 22 July, had led to flooding in a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The worst flooding had hit Ukraine, Moldova and Romania, with 42 people reported dead and some 40,000 people evacuated. In Ukraine, the Government had requested international assistance. The most urgent needs were 1,000 tents and 100 water water pumps, as well as fuel, and power generators. A total of 24,000 hectares of farmland were still flooded and the total losses in Ukraine from flooding were estimated at between $650-870 million. A briefing note and a map of the affected areas was available at the back of the room.

Other

Glenn Thomas of the World Health Organization (WHO) drew attention to a note to the media issued by WHO yesterday on new policy guidelines to help health and criminal justice authorities target services to drug users, especially those who inject drugs, to prevent and treat tuberculosis (TB) and HIV. The guidelines contained 13 recommendations that aimed to promote and ensure a more coordinated approach among the health sectors, prison and criminal justice sectors, and anybody who dealt with drug users so that they could have universal access to treatment, care and prevention services on TB and HIV. The full note was available on the Internet at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2008/np08/en/index.html.

Praveen Randhawa of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights drew attention to a joint statement issued this morning by the Acting UN High Commissioner for Human and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People (9 August). Press releases and an electronic press kit were available on the Web.