REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing, which was also attended by Spokespersons for the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the World Meteorological Organization, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the World Economic Forum and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General

Ms. Heuzé said that, yesterday, the Secretary-General had issued a report on the situation in Abkhazia and Georgia. The mandate of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia was scheduled to end on 15 October 2008. In his report, the Secretary-General recommended to the Security Council to extend the mandate of the Mission until 15 February 2009.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said that the Preparatory Committee for the Durban Review Conference was currently meeting in Geneva. This was one of the last meetings before the Review Conference, which would take place in April 2009 in Geneva.

International Day for Disaster Reduction

Tomorrow, 8 October 2008, was the International Day for Disaster Reduction, Ms. Heuzé noted.

Salavano Briceno, Director of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) Secretariat, said that 2008 had been, so far, a terrible year in terms of the number of victims of disasters. UNISDR had already recorded that, in the first six months of the year, some 229,000 persons had been killed and more than 130 million persons had been affected by natural disasters. The first six months of this year had thus already claimed more victims than the Tsunami of 2004. Two major events had been the main causes – Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. Such events were becoming more frequent now. The severe hurricane season in the Caribbean and the current floods in India were also major disasters. Climate change was expected to make things worse.

The International Day for Disaster Reduction was a day to recall the number of people that were killed and affected every day by disasters due to natural hazards and to call for more disaster risk reduction action, said Mr. Briceno. They also wanted to put the emphasis on hospital safety. This year, they were in the middle of a campaign, together with the World Health Organization and the World Bank, to make hospitals safer, as one essential way to reduce disasters.

The Secretary-General had convened a ministerial meeting last week in New York, where Governments had expressed their concern and priority for the subject. They were thus looking forward to more action by Governments in the coming months and years, said Mr. Briceno. John Holmes, the Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator would also make a presentation on the subject in New York today.

Answering a question by a journalist, on what measures had been taken to improve hospital safety, Mr. Briceno said that it involved building codes and the training of hospital staff and health ministries’ staff. By making hospitals safer, the number of victims in any disasters could be reduced. Often, more victims were created by the destruction of health facilities and the resulting lack of health services than by the hazard itself.

Gaëlle Sévenier of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that a regional conference, organized by WMO in collaboration with the UNISDR, the World Bank and the Group on Earth Observations would take place on 9 to 10 October 2008 in Moldavia. This conference would bring together European countries on the theme of the collaboration between national hydro-meteorological services and risk management institutions in the prevention of and adaptation to natural catastrophes. WMO was also organizing a workshop in Port Vila, Vanuatu, from 6 to 10 October. That workshop was bringing together development partners, government officials in charge of development policy and the heads of national meteorological and hydrological services of the 15 least developed countries in Asia and the Pacific. The workshop aimed at forging new partnerships for achieving national and regional development goals and offered policy-makers an opportunity to learn more about products and services provided by meteorological and hydrological services.

Ms. Sévenier also said that WMO’s Secretary-General had yesterday addressed the Climate Change Forum in Gambia, where he had talked about the impacts of climate change in Africa and the increase of floods and droughts. He had recalled that least developed countries were among the hardest hit, while they were also those least responsible for generating climate change. Providing help to those countries was a moral obligation of the international community, he had said.

Central Asia Quake

Elisabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that an earthquake of magnitude 6.6 on the Richter scale had occurred in the South of Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, in the mountainous region at the border with Tajikistan and China. Access to the affected areas was difficult. The worst-affected areas were located in Chon-Alai and Alai, 220 kilometres from the main city of Osh, which had already been struck by an earthquake in January. No data on the impact of the earthquake was yet available due to difficulties in assessing the situation. The only data available was for the village of Nura, where 70 per cent of the entire infrastructure had been completely destroyed and 60 people had been killed. Assessments of other settlements were ongoing.

The Ministry of Emergencies had set up an on-site operation centre and had dispatched search and rescue workers, Ms. Byrs added. It also planned to set up a camp with tents for 600 families. The Russian emergency ministry was also sending a cargo flight to the region today.

Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that UNHCR, in coordination with OCHA, had dispatched a first consignment of 400 mattresses and 1,500 blankets from their warehouse in Osh. They had also provided an interagency assessment team, dispatched from Osh into the affected areas, with urgently needed communications equipment. They were waiting for more information from the disaster to assess humanitarian needs and how their emergency stocks in Osh could be used to relieve the victims.

Other Humanitarian Situations

Ms. Byrs said that in Chad several humanitarian organizations had been the victims of banditry. This year alone, 120 security incidents had been reported. This was hampering the humanitarian work of the international community. Recent rain had also deteriorated the roads. Both situations had resulted in a temporary halt of the activities of several non-governmental organizations.

Mr. Redmond said that UNHCR had assisted more than a quarter million Afghans to return home so far this year from Pakistan and Iran, many of them reportedly due to economic and security uncertainties faced in exile. Since January, UNHCR had assisted a total of 251,880 registered Afghans to repatriate from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. Many said they had returned to Afghanistan because they could not afford the high cost of living in exile amid the current food and fuel crises. Others had cited security uncertainties as a reason for leaving Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Many of them had returned to their places of origin, but some were unable to go back to their villages, as they had no land, shelter, job opportunities or security there.

The voluntary repatriation operation from Pakistan to Afghanistan would be temporarily suspended at the end of October for the annual winter break and assisted returns would resume in March 2009, Mr. Redmond added. More than 5 million Afghans had returned home since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Among them, over 4.3 million had repatriated with UNHCR assistance, mostly from Pakistan and Iran.

In South Sudan, Mr. Redmond said a UNHCR emergency team estimated that within the past two weeks at least 5,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo had arrived in the Yambio area, in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan. A three-member UNHCR team had travelled to Yambio over the weekend to assess the needs of the new arrivals and to arrange assistance for them. The team had reported that an estimated 150 Congolese were still crossing daily from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to southern Sudan. Refugees had told UNHCR that they had fled their villages near Dungu, in the northeast of the country, because of ferocious attacks by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army. In Gangura, their team had spoken to several refugees who had given harrowing accounts of their flight.

Turning to Somalia, Mr. Redmond said that torrential rains and strong winds had hit a string of settlements for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Somalis between Mogadishu and Afgooye, destroying makeshift shelters and leaving many homeless. Ten hours of heavy rain had fallen overnight Sunday, flooding many shelters and forcing many people to return to their homes in war-torn Mogadishu, despite the dangers. Many people were once again homeless.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that according to IOM’s latest displacement and return assessment report published today, the Government of Iraq was placing increased emphasis on the return of internally displaced persons and refugees through a variety of legal and practical measures. Despite these measures, the rate of return was low. As of 21 September, some 100,000 individuals had returned to Baghdad. The majority of the returnees were internally displaced persons and not refugees from neighbouring countries. Many were still unable or unwilling to return home.

Report on the State of Food and Agriculture

Teresa Buerkle of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that FAO’s annual report on the State of Food and Agriculture, launched today, called for an urgent review of biofuel policies and subsidies in order to preserve world food security, protect poor farmers, promote broad based rural development and ensure environmental sustainability. Biofuel production based on agricultural commodities had increased more than threefold from 2000 to 2007 and now covered nearly two per cent of the world’s consumption of transport fuels, and that growth was expected to continue. The demand for agricultural foodstocks for liquid biofuels would continue to grow over the next decade, putting upward pressure on food prices.

The report also stated that if developing countries could reap the benefits of biofuel production and if those benefits could reach the poor, higher demand for biofuels could contribute to rural development, Ms. Buerkle noted. However, high agricultural commodity prices were already having a negative impact on developing countries that were largely dependent on imports. Further, expanded use and production of biofuels would not necessarily contribute as much to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as had been previously assumed.

World Mental Health Day

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that World Mental Health Day would take place on 10 October 2008 and WHO would launch on that occasion a new programme calling for the urgent scaling up of services for mental disorders, particularly in developing countries.

Dr. Shekhar Saxena, a WHO Expert, presenting the Mental Health Gap Action Programme, said that the programme called for the scaling-up of services for a range of mental disorders. One out of four persons would have a recognizable mental disorder at some point in their life. In most low-income countries, the numbers of psychiatrists was extremely small. Basic mental healthcare was being denied to millions of people who lived in those countries. More than 75 per cent of people with mental, neurological and substance abuse disorders were not treated at all in low and middle-income countries. Less than 2 per cent of the health budget was being spent on mental health in a large number of low and middle-income countries.

The WHO programme focused on eight conditions: depression; psychosis; epilepsy; child mental health disorders; dementia; alcohol-related problems; drug use-related problems; and suicide as a condition to be prevented, said Dr. Saxena. In the next few years, WHO hoped to raise enough resources and enough determination from countries to better look after those conditions.

Other

Ms. Chaib of WHO said that a meeting was currently taking place in Madrid on the correlation between climate change and public health, where some 100 researchers were currently drafting a research agenda for global action on the issue. In addition, she announced that the World Health Report 2008, entitled “Primary Health Care – Now More Than Ever” would be launched on 14 October 2008 in Almaty to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Alma-Ata on primary health care.

Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that OHCHR would issue a press release today about a Somali mother and her three children, who had been brutally murdered in South Africa on Friday. The mother had been stabbed more than 100 times. This event was part of a wider pattern of xenophobic attacks in the country, especially on Somali traders and shopkeepers.

Catherine Sibut of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that UNCTAD had issued a policy brief entitled “The Crisis of a Century”, in which UNCTAD experts analysed the implications of the current financial crisis for development issues. Indeed, UNCTAD experts had been analysing for some time the fragility of the international financial system, and for them the current situation seemed to confirm the analysis that had been made for approximately 10 years now. Also today, UNCTAD would announce the launch by the International Task Force on Harmonization and Equivalency in Organic Agricultures of two tools to facilitate trade in organic products.

Irene Mia of the World Economic Forum said that tomorrow they would launch their twenty-ninth Global Competitiveness Report. Covering 134 countries, the report aimed at assessing the countries’ growth potential in the long term. The United States ranked first, followed by Switzerland.