REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE
Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the International Labour Office, the World Health Organization, the UN Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Secretary-General’s Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Secretary-General made a previously unannounced visit to Kabul yesterday, following the attack on a Kabul guesthouse last week in which five UN staff members were killed and others were injured. He met with UN staff, Special Representative Kai Eide, heads of UN agencies and security officials.
Transcripts of the Secretary-General’s remarks to the staff as well as his comments at a press conference were sent to journalists yesterday.
The Secretary-General arrived in London early this morning for a breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He would also address a Summit of Religious and Secular Leaders on Climate Change. The Secretary-General would be in Athens, Greece tomorrow where he would address the Third Global Forum on Migration and Development, and the Greek Parliament.
Climate Change
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the last five-day negotiating session before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December started yesterday in Barcelona, Spain. Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said that he was convinced that it was possible to further narrow down options and come up with working texts for a comprehensive, fair and effective international climate change deal, during this session. The Barcelona talks needed to make clear progress and put in place a solid foundation for success at Copenhagen, he added. Parties were expected in Barcelona to make progress on adaptation, technology cooperation, action to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing countries and enhanced capacity building.
Also on climate change, Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said five new countries had joined the UN-REDD Programme, which supported countries to develop capacity to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Argentina, Cambodia, Ecuador, Nepal and Sri Lanka were the first to officially request to participate in the UN-REDD Programme, in addition to the initial nine member countries, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said she had some documentation to give to journalists who were interested in this issue.
Geneva Activities
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said the Committee against Torture yesterday opened its forty-third session at the Palais Wilson, during which it will consider the reports of Yemen, Slovakia, El Salvador, Azerbaijan, Colombia and the Republic of Moldova. At the opening meeting, the Committee said the report of Spain would be postponed to the end of the present session because translations of the report were not available in the UN languages. This morning, the Committee would be reviewing the periodic report of Yemen in absence of a delegation.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also opened its forty-third session yesterday, during which it will consider the reports of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Poland, Madagascar and the Republic of Korea. The Committee would be reviewing the report of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over three meetings, starting this morning and concluding at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 4 November.
Director-General of UNOG and UN Policy for Post-Conflict Employment Creation, Income Generation and Reintegration
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, would launch on Wednesday, 4 November at 3 p.m. the United Nations Policy for Post-Conflict Employment Creation, Income Generation and Reintegration. The policy was the result of a comprehensive three-year consultation and drafting process, jointly led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), which would contribute to lasting peace in volatile post-conflict settings – through gainful employment and steady incomes. The event would take place in Salle XII
A media advisory as well as an embargoed press release had already been sent to journalists.
Corinne Perthuis of the International Labour Office said concerning the UN policy to create employment in post-conflict situations, the idea was simple. After a war or a conflict, people needed to work to resume their lives. At the request of the Secretary-General in 2006, a team of UN agencies and ILO started working together to create this policy to help reduce the period between conflict and reconstruction and the creation of work in post-conflict situations. This afternoon, an interview would be posted on the ILO website with the head of the ILO team participating in this process.
World Health Organization
Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said WHO would be launching an important report next week on women and health. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan would launch the report on 9 November. On that day, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at WHO, the Director-General had invited representatives of all the Permanent Missions in Geneva as well as representatives of civil society and of UN agencies to attend the launch of the report. Then at 11:30 a.m., the Director-General would give a press conference to present the report to journalists. A media note would be sent out tomorrow on how to access the embargoed report, press releases and fact sheets on a protected site online.
A journalist said that experts in Germany and in other countries said yesterday that a new wave of H1N1 was imminent or had already started. What was the WHO response to this new wave? Also he wanted details on the preparedness plans of WHO Member States, and how WHO assessed the quality of these preparedness plans.
Gregory Hartl of WHO said as WHO had been saying for weeks now, Member States needed to be and remain prepared. WHO had always tried to draw attention to the fact that the world had not yet hit the peak of what was a normal influenza season. The influenza season normally peaked between January and February. It was completely expected that they would be seeing more influenza cases at this time, and that they would continue to see more. In the epidemiological update put out at the end of last week, it was indicated that large parts of North America and parts of Europe were already in over the epidemic threshold, so there was certainly substantial influenza activity and they expected to see more. The indication was that this would become something quite wide spread across the northern hemisphere and temperate zones as they went forward through the late autumn and winter. In terms of preparedness, WHO had been working with Member States for several years on pandemic preparedness plans, and almost all countries now had some sort of pandemic preparedness plan. But of course there was a difference between what countries planned and what they put in place, given the resources.
Asked about the large percentage of people who were rejecting the H1N1 vaccination, even those at risk, Mr. Hartl said the vaccine was one of the best tools that they had to fight this pandemic, and the advantages of getting vaccinated far outweighed the risks at this point.
In response to another question, Mr. Hartl said the H1N1 virus could do a lot of things, it could mutate and become less or more severe. It could also mutate to a form which would make it a less good match for the vaccine. Those were all eventualities that they could not account for today. So far, they also had, with the hundreds of thousands of doses which had been administered, not seen any severe adverse effects. There might be when millions of doses were administered across tens of countries. People had to be aware that there could on the very rare occasion be an adverse event, but they should also know that at this moment, they had at least 5,700 laboratory-confirmed deaths from this virus. Pregnant women for example were much more affected than people in the general population. There was very sound public health rationale for vaccinating at risk groups.
Angola
Andrej Mahecic of the UN Refugee Agency said UNHCR has airlifted emergency relief items from South Africa to Angola to help alleviate the plight of tens of thousands of Angolans who were expelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo last month. The Boeing 747 from Johannesburg arrived in the Angolan capital Luanda early Saturday evening carrying 2,250 tents, 5,000 sleeping mats and 4,000 blankets, as well as one prefabricated warehouse. In Luanda the items were immediately loaded onto army planes provided by the government of Angola to be sent to Uige and Zaire provinces in northern Angola bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to Angolan authorities, the number of Angolans who were expelled plus those who came back of their own accord in the wake of the expulsions now totaled 50,000. Most of those expelled had refugee status in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were now living in extremely difficult conditions. Similarly, UNHCR found that some 30,000 forcibly-returned Angolans in the Mbaza Congo area of Zaire province needed shelter, water, medication and food. UNHCR had given them some blankets and soap from its stocks in Luanda and was working with UN agencies and other partners to provide them with further emergency relief.
Iraq
Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said IOM's latest report on the needs of returned displaced Iraqis said that going back home was presenting returnees with a new set of challenges that were almost as daunting as those when they were displaced. Of the more than 58,000 returnee families (348,660 people) identified by IOM, the Organization has so far carried out in-depth assessments of just over 4,000 families (nearly 25,000 people). The assessment report found that food, non-food items and fuel were the priority needs, with the latter increasingly important as winter hit. Employment too was a major concern with 34 per cent of the IOM-assessed families reporting that although they were able to work, they were unable to find it. Female headed households, representing 12 per cent of assessed families, were among the most vulnerable groups, with 70 per cent of them unable to work and 26 per cent able to work but again, unable to find employment. Basic needs such as shelter, water, electricity and health care also posed serious concerns with 34 per cent of returnee families going back to homes that were partially or completely destroyed. Without employment or a reliable source of income, these families were in dire need of assistance to help them rebuild their homes. In a bid to help improve the lot of returning displaced families and to find long-term solutions for them, IOM had this year provided in-kind grants to 500 families to help them start their own businesses and to re-establish employment and income for them. Over the next 12 months, the Organization would target an additional 6,500 returnee families across the country for similar assistance. IOM was seeking further funding to assist more unemployed returnees to build a new business or to find a new job in an effort to find durable solutions to the displacement crisis in the country.
Other
Ms. Perthuis of ILO said at 11:30 a.m. today, there would be a press briefing on the launch of the Global Wage Report : 2009 Update. Copies of the report and the press release were available at the back of the room.
The Governing Body of the ILO was meeting in Geneva from 5 to 20 November, Ms. Perthuis said. The Governing Body would again take up the Global Jobs Pact which was adopted by the 98th Session of the International Labour Conference in June 2009, as well as the issue of wages.
Samar Shamoon of the World Intellectual Property Organization said on 5 and 6 November, WIPO would be hosting an international conference to help improve understanding among the donor community of the importance of intellectual property to development. Copies of the programme were in the press room.
Ms. Shamoon said that Advisory Committee on Enforcement was meeting from 2 to 4 November and she would be happy to provide journalists with the speakers list and agenda.