REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the United Nations Information Service, chaired the briefing attended by spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization and the International Organization for Migration.

Syria: Dire Situation in Aleppo

Jessy Chahine, for the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria, informed that today the Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura would be briefing the Security Council on the situation in Aleppo, in a closed session. There would be no media opportunities before or after the briefing. A stakeout would take place at the Palais des Nations on 11 August, after the meeting of the Humanitarian Task Force for Syria.

Jens Laerke, for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), read a statement by Mr. Yacoub El Hillo, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, and Mr. Kevin Kennedy, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis. He said that the United Nations had called for a humanitarian pause in the fighting in Aleppo in order to enable immediate access to repair the electricity and water networks and provide humanitarian assistance to people in need. An estimated 250,000 to 275,000 people remained trapped in East Aleppo since early July. He added that since 6 August, the main access route into West Aleppo had also been cut.

Attacks on civilian infrastructure this week had severely damaged the city’s electric and water infrastructure, leaving over two million residents of Aleppo without electricity or access to the public water network. Water, available through wells and tanks in Aleppo, was not nearly enough to sustain the needs of the population. The consequences could be dramatic for the population if the electricity and water networks was not immediately repaired.

Mr. Laerke said that the UN stood ready to assist the civilian population of Aleppo, but that required a full-fledged ceasefire, or weekly 48-hour humanitarian pauses to reach the million people in need throughout Aleppo and to replenish the food and medicine stocks, which had been running dangerously low. He insisted that civilians, including the sick and the wounded, had to be reached, through the most effective ways, both through crossline and cross-border operations from Turkey. They had to be assisted without discrimination, and wherever they were located.

Christophe Boulierac, for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that two million people in Aleppo were left with no access to running water through the public network. Those cuts were coming amid a heat wave, putting children in Aleppo at a grave risk of waterborne diseases, and getting clean water running again could not wait for the fighting to stop. Urgent repairs to electricity infrastructure were critical as pumping water was the only way to meet the needs of the two million residents. Unless water pumping was restored in the coming days, civilians would be forced to resort to unsafe water sources, exposing children to diarrhoea and malnutrition.

Mr. Boulierac explained that since the recent escalation of attacks and fighting on 31 July, UNICEF had scaled up its emergency water trucking in the western parts of Aleppo city. With the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, UNICEF was trucking emergency drinking water daily to an estimated 325,000 people per day, including families displaced by recent fighting. Safe drinking water was currently being trucked from UNICEF-equipped 70 ground water wells to Aleppo city, where UNICEF and partners had installed 28 water treatment units.

In the eastern parts of Aleppo, up to 300,000 people – over a third of them children – were relying on water from wells, which was potentially contaminated by faecal matter and unsafe to drink. Hence, Mr. Boulierac stressed the urgent need to repair water pipes and other infrastructure. UNICEF urged parties to the conflict to immediately allow safe access for technicians to conduct critical repairs to the electricity and water systems.

Tarik Jašareviæ, for the World Health Organization (WHO), added that the WHO regional office had sent out a note on the situation in Aleppo. According to Eastern Aleppo City local health authorities, eight out of ten hospitals and 13 out of 28 primary healthcare centres were now partially functional or out of service as a result of the fighting. At least six healthcare workers had been killed in Aleppo city in 2016, decreasing a shrinking number of available health professionals. For every one doctor who was killed or who had left, at least 40 Syrians were deprived of medical care every day. There were also reports of doctors working so hard that they themselves had cardiac arrests and could not be saved. As a part of the immediate response to the needs in the western part of the city, before the main access had been cut off on 6 August, the WHO had delivered 92 tons of medical supplies; eight trucks of life saving and life sustaining medical supplies had been brought to the Al Razi Hospital and the Aleppo University Hospital. Another 36 tons had been prepositioned for immediate response to East Aleppo once access was granted.

He added that on 6 August, a mobile clinic had been hit in Aleppo. This clinic had been supported by WHO, UNDP, UNICEF and UNFPA. It had been operated by Al-Ihsan Charity and had been on duty at the time of the attack; five civilians had been killed. Medical staff had been injured but were now stable. The clinic could care for 3,000 patients per month.

Asked about the reasons for the particular viciousness towards medical facilities, Mr. Jašareviæ confirmed that there had indeed been an increase in the attacks on health facilities in Syria in recent months. What was very clear was that the fewer health facilities there were, the less access to health care. There was already a serious shortage of health workers in Syria, and people were having ever more problems with getting health care. There was no justification for attacks on health facilities, which treated patients without discrimination. Health workers were there to save lives and had to be protected. Mr. Boulierac added that in the recent attack on the Idlib hospital, five children had been among those killed. Attacks on health facilities and workers were blatant violations of the international humanitarian law and could amount to war crimes.

Responding to a question on the call for humanitarian pause, Mr. Laerke said that such a call was not new. All parts of the UN were supporting that call and preparing for such a pause to happen. In terms of numbers, it was estimated that there were between 250,000 and 270,000 people in eastern Aleppo; for western Aleppo, an earlier estimate had been 1.2 million. Those were all estimates, and teams in the field worked hard to consolidate the numbers. Up to two million people altogether were cut off from water and electricity, which brought enormous health risks.

Asked what would happen to the peace talks if there was no cessation of hostilities by the end of the month, Ms. Chahine said that currently intensive consultations were going on between the co-chairs of the International Syria Support Group, and there was hope that there would indeed be movement in the coming days. It was hoped that the parties would engage in a serious manner, and all were working very hard on that.

Maldives: Reintroduction of the Death Penalty

Ravina Shamdasani, for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), read a statement by the High Commissioner, who appealed to the Government of the Maldives to refrain from carrying out planned executions and to uphold the de facto moratorium, which had been in place in the country since 1954.

The Maldives had long provided important leadership on global efforts to bring an end to the use of the death penalty, so it was deeply regrettable that a series of steps had been taken to resume executions in the country, High Commissioner Zeid said.

Since November 2016, there had been a number of worrying developments on the issue of capital punishment in the Maldives. Ending the long-standing practice of commuting death sentences to life imprisonment, the High Court in November 2015 had ruled that the President might no longer exercise that power for the offence of intentional murder if all the heirs of the victim demanded the death penalty. In June 2016, capital punishment regulations had been further amended to allow for hanging in addition to lethal injections as methods of execution.

Following those developments, on 24 July, the High Court had issued a stay order on any imminent executions pending the result of a case submitted by local civil society organizations that brought into question the constitutionality of death penalty regulations in the country. However, the Supreme Court had swiftly issued an order cancelling the stay order issued by the High Court. The Supreme Court had reiterated that its decisions on death sentences were final.

There were currently 17 individuals on death row in the Maldives, including some whose cases raised serious due process concerns. There were fears that three such individuals, Hussein Humam, Ahmed Murrath and Mohamed Nabeel, were at imminent risk of execution.

The United Nations opposed the use of the death penalty in all circumstances. In the countries that retained the death penalty, international human rights law required that those sentenced to death had the right to seek amnesty, pardon or commutation of their sentences. The High Commissioner urged the leaders and the people of the Maldives to continue to uphold the moratorium on the death penalty and work towards prohibiting the practice altogether.

Mona Rishmawi, Chief, Rule of Law, Equality and Non-Discrimination Branch, OHCHR, said that the moratorium had been in place since 1954 and, in the past, all Presidents had commuted death sentences. In 2014, however, the possibility to execute death sentences had been strengthened.

Another law had just been issued on defamation, which provided for sentences of up to USD 135,000, and jail sentences from three to six months, if the fine was not paid. OHCHR was very worried about it, and there were protests taking place at the moment, where journalists and civil society organizations were showing their opposition to the law.

In response to a question, Ms. Rishmawi reiterated that there were currently 17 individuals on the death row in the Maldives. In 2015, an item had been entered into the budget to provide for execution chambers. In the three cases mentioned, fair trial was questionable. All three cases were related to intentional murders. There were worries that the death penalty would resume, even for cases that went beyond intentional murders. The High Court had judged that Presidents could not commute the sentence if the family of the victim did not agree. While in one case, the family of the victim was not demanding execution, there were concerns that this decision would allow the families of the victims to seek revenge through death penalty.

Regarding former President Nasheed, Ms. Rishmawi stated that the political atmosphere in the country was very tense and there was politicization of the judiciary. Mr. Nasheed had been allowed to leave the country and had political asylum in the United Kingdom. The problematic point in the case of Mr. Nasheed was that he had not been allowed to present his defence in court.

Central America: Migrants

Joel Millman, for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), stated that the IOM was increasingly monitoring the situation of migrants in Costa Rica and across Central America. There were reports of hundreds of African migrants passing through the region. However, it seemed that all of those people were not African, as reported, but rather Haitian. In Nicaragua, the previous week, ten bodies had been found, and subsequently identified as Haitian. There was also news that two victims from the same smuggling group had returned to Costa Rica with shooting wounds. There had been more than 300 recorded deaths along the Central American migration route in 2016 so far, which was easily one of the most lethal areas in the world. It was expected that the number of casualties would go up for the rest of the summer.

The route through Brazil and Ecuador had existed for years, said Mr. Millman. Both countries had been a destination for Haitians. Migration flows tended to reverse when the economy was in downturn, as was the case with Brazil now. The measures taken by Colombia and Ecuador were primarily directed at Cuban migrants, though. There were figures of 27 Cubans deported from Colombia to Cuba the previous week. IOM objected forced deportations and forcing people to turn around.

Responding to a question, Mr. Millman confirmed that historically the preferred final destination for most migrants in the area had been the United States, but some journeys could take very long, and migrants sometimes asked for asylum along the way.

Ethiopia

On reports that demonstrators had been shot dead in Ethiopia, Ms. Shamdasani said that the OHCHR was aware of the reports, but it was difficult to verify them. OHCHR would revert once it had confirmed the facts.

Turkey

In response to a question, Ms. Rishmawi said that the OHCHR was hoping that the death penalty would not be reinstated in Turkey, which was a party to the Optional Protocol on the abolishment of the death penalty. There were no legal ways to renounce the Optional Protocol once a country had committed to it. Turkey had not carried out capital punishment since 1984. As far as the OHCHR was aware, it would be the first such case of a country going back on its international obligations. The Government had not yet said that it was taking steps to renounce the State party’s obligations, which was very important. It was hoped that the Government would not take that step.

Geneva Activities and Other Issues

Ms. Vellucci informed that the Conference on Disarmament would hold its next public session on 16 August at 10 a.m.

The Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, was considering the report of Paraguay this morning, after which it will consider reports of Lebanon and Ukraine later this week.

The Committee against Torture would hold a public session tomorrow morning, to discuss follow-ups to concluding observations. The Committee would then be meeting in private until the public closure of the session on 12 August.

On 12 August at 12.30 p.m. in Press Room I, the Committee against Torture would hold a press conference to present concluding observations on Kuwait, Honduras, Burundi and Mongolia. The speakers would be Jens Modvig, Committee Chairperson, and Committee members Sébastien Touzé, Claude Heller and Alessio Bruni.

Ms. Vellucci informed that today was the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, and the message of the Secretary-General was available.

The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/UNOG09082016