REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, Director of the Information Service at the United Nations Office at Geneva, chaired the briefing which also heard from Spokespersons for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration.

Secretary-General’s Middle East Trip

Ms. Heuzé said it was maybe too early to start talking about the complete results of the Secretary-General’s trip to the Middle East and his meetings with the top leaders there. However, it was clear that the Secretary-General had gained the support of the capitals he visited from Syria to Iran for the implementation of resolution 1701 which ended the hostilities and authorized an expanded United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Concerning support for the expanded force, Qatar yesterday became the first Arab country to pledge between 200 to 300 troops for the force. The Secretary-General had spoken to journalists in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Doha, Qatar and transcripts of his remarks were available in the press room. The Secretary-General was now in Egypt, and from there, he would fly to Turkey.

In Jeddah, in response to a question, the Secretary-General told journalists that both parties have accepted the good offices of the Secretary-General to help resolve the problem of the two abducted Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah. He said he would designate someone discretely and quietly to work with them to find a solution. In Doha, the Secretary-General repeated his call for a lifting of the Israeli blockade against Lebanon. “It is a particularly destructive act because it is at a time when Lebanon is trying to reconstruct and needs to bring in material and get its commerce going to be able to rebuild,” he said.

General Assembly

Ms. Heuzé said the sixty-first session of the General Assembly would start in New York on 12 September. In the next couple of days, a comprehensive press kit would be put in the press room. On 14 and 15 September, the General Assembly would hold a high-level dialogue on international migration and development. The Director recalled that at the 2006 substantive session of the Economic and Social Council which was held in Geneva in July, ECOSOC had discussed the issue of migration and development.

Geneva Activities

Ms. Heuzé said the Conference on Disarmament would be concluding the third and last part of its 2006 session on 15 September. The next public plenary of the Conference will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 6 September in Room XX. The Conference will be discussing its report to the General Assembly. The plenary would be followed by a private meeting.

The Group of Governmental Experts of the States Parties to the Conventional Weapons Convention will be concluding their meeting at the Palais des Nations on Wednesday, 6 September. The President of the meeting, Ambassador Francois Rivasseau of France, usually briefed journalists after the meeting and she would be happy to set up something with him if journalists were interested.

Ms. Heuzé said that on 7 and 8 September, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People would convene the United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People at the Palais des Nations. The Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, would deliver the message of the Secretary-General to the meeting. A curtain raiser was available, and there would also be coverage of the meetings in English and in French.

The Working Group on Internet Governance was meeting at the Palais des Nations on 7 and 8 September under the Chairmanship of Nitin Desai, the Chairman of the Working Group and Special Adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The Working Group’s meetings would be closed. The Working Group was preparing for the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum to be held in Athens from 30 October to 2 November on the theme of Internet governance in the service of development.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child would be meeting in two chambers from 11 to 29 September at the Palais Wilson, Ms. Heuzé said. A background press release would be issued on Thursday, 7 September. The Committee would be considering reports from Samoa, Ethiopia, Oman, Kiribati, Swaziland, Senegal, Republic of Congo, Benin, Ireland and Jordan. Under the Optional Protocol on children and armed conflict, the Committee would review reports of Kazakhstan, Malta and Viet Nam, and under the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, it would consider reports from Syria, Denmark and Viet Nam.

A journalist asked if a press conference could be organized with members of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries which had recently visited Honduras and Ms. Heuzé said she would check if it was possible.

In response to another question, Ms. Heuzé said that the General Assembly would also be discussing on 11 October a global study on violence against children - all sorts of violence except for armed conflict - which was being jointly presented by UNICEF, WHO, OHCHR and a number of non-governmental organizations. This was the first time that international organizations and non-governmental organizations were collaborating on such a study under the leadership of Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. A series of briefings would be prepared on the report.

Human Rights

José Luis Díaz of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said concerning the Commission of Inquiry established by the Human Rights Council on the situation in Lebanon, on 1 September a press release was issued announcing the composition of the panel. A secretariat was established for the Commission and it would start meeting later this week at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The three Commissioners were expected in Geneva next week, possibly as early as Monday, to begin their preliminary work -- setting an agenda, adopting their terms of reference and possibly establishing a travel schedule to the region. Mr. Díaz said he doubted the members of the Commission would speak to journalists before they started their investigative work, but he would check on that anyway; they would speak to journalists at the end of their work.

In response to a question, Mr. Díaz said that the resolution of the special session of the Human Rights Council gave the Commissioners the parameters of their investigation but the Commissioners had to decide on their terms of reference, the scope of the investigation and other elements, such as whom they will want to speak to and where they will want to go.

Answering another question on whether they had been promised access, Mr. Díaz said the Commissioners had not yet demanded access to anywhere because they had not adopted their terms of reference or work programme.

Asked about what the next session of the Human Rights Council would be focusing on, Mr. Díaz said the Council would likely be hearing the reports of the different Special Rapporteurs on their work over the past year.

Asked if the situation in Darfur would be considered in a special session or in the next regular session of the Council, Mr. Díaz said he could not predict what members of the Council would do, and any Council member could make a request for a special session on a subject that they deemed it necessary for. One way at least the Council would look at the situation in Darfur was through the report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sudan, who would be presenting her report at the next regular session (starting 18 September). The situation in Darfur was a human rights and a humanitarian crisis that had lasted for years, and he could not imagine that it would not be discussed at the Council.

Process to Elect New Director-General for WHO

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization said the deadline for the nomination of names for the post of Director-General of WHO was today at midnight. Tomorrow, the President of the Executive Council would open the envelopes and the interim Director-General of WHO would send to all the diplomatic missions in Switzerland the list of candidates. Later in the day tomorrow, journalists would get a note to correspondents containing the list. On 5 October, curriculum vitae of the candidates and other documentation concerning their work would be sent to the permanent missions in the six languages. From 6 to 8 November, the Executive Council would meet at WHO to interview the candidates and then would propose one person only to the WHO Assembly which would meet at the Palais des Nations on 9 November to confirm the new Director-General.

Lebanon

Michael Bociurkwi of the United Nations Children’s Fund said since the cessation of the hostilities in Lebanon, UNICEF has been able to get a much clearer picture of the massive damage to water distribution systems in the country, particularly in the south. UNICEF was working with the authorities to try to rehabilitate the system that served up to 750,000 people in the south. A lot of the water systems were supplied by springs and
wells and in many cases, either the pipes have been damaged or the electricity has stopped flowing.

Mr. Bociurkwi said the other issue UNICEF has been working on in Lebanon was unexploded ordnance. In order to reach hundreds of thousands of families, UNICEF was fixing labels with messages on unexploded ordnance on the bottled water it was distributing so that families and children could better understand the threat of these objects.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said with UNHCR's distribution of emergency aid proceeding smoothly, its field teams were now looking at some of the wider problems facing the victims of the war in Lebanon. There were thousands of Lebanese who had not been able to return to their homes - in areas around Beirut there were an estimated 12,000 displaced who had not returned after the war. In Beirut itself, the charity Caritas estimated there were 35,000. UNHCR’s partners noted that the children needed help to resume their education and counseling because of their war experiences. As part of that problem, UNHCR has helped a Lebanese NGO, the Development for People and Nature Association, to set up a summer camp they were running for children in the town of Jezzine. In the area of Lebanon closer to the Israeli border, the emphasis remained on getting basic emergency aid -- tents, blankets, mattresses, plastic sheeting - into the heavily damaged villages. UNHCR was not advising further returns to this most southerly area of Lebanon because of the destruction of the basic infrastructure such as water and electricity and the danger posed by unexploded ordnance littering the landscape.

Other

Fadela Chaib of the World Health Organization reminded journalists that a press conference would be held today at 11:30 a.m. on the launch of the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme Report on progress towards the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goals. Copies of the embargoed report were in the press room as was a press release.

Ron Redmond of the UN Refugee Agency said the final convoy of UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme for Liberian refugees residing in the Kissidougou region of Guinea was completed last week, setting the stage for the closure later this month of UNHCR's field office there after 18 years. Since the beginning of organised voluntary repatriation to Liberia in November 2004, over 38,000 Liberians refugees have been repatriated with UNHCR assistance. This total also includes some 16,000 Liberian refugees who had been living in camps in the Kissidougou region. Most went back to the Liberian counties of Lofa, Bong, Montsserado and Nimba.

Mark Oliver of the World Meteorological Organization said that concerning the worst drought to affect south-west China in at least 50 years, the latest monthly forecast from the China Meteorological Administration predicted that it would continue until at least mid-September. An estimated 18 million people suffered water shortages last month and millions of hectares of farmland had been ruined. A note with more details was available.

Catherine Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said the situation in Darfur was again deteriorating. If the African Union force left the region at the end of the month, this would cause a lot of problems for humanitarian actors and make their work more difficult. Even with the presence of the African Union force, WFP had been unable to reach nearly half a million vulnerable persons in July because of insecurity. The withdrawal of the force would also create problems inside the camps for the displaced persons. WFP and its partners had asked for two extra helicopters to allow them to deliver food by air as it was already too dangerous to provide them with food by truck. WFP was also facing problems financing its programme for Darfur and needed $350 million to cover its operation there for the next three months.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Ethiopia, five regions were now affected by the Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD) outbreak.
Efforts to contain the disease had not been successful and cases had now been confirmed in the capital Addis Ababa and as far south as Guji zone about 200 kilometers from the border with Kenya. There were 13,160 confirmed cases and 148 deaths. The continuing floods, which were happening across the country, were acting as an aggravating factor spreading the disease.

Jemini Pandya of the International Organization for Migration said IOM and China today signed an agreement on the establishment of a liaison office in the Chinese capital, Beijing. The agreement, signed by the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of China in Geneva, Sha Zukang, and IOM Director General, Brunson McKinley, comes into effect immediately and foresees the IOM office developing and promoting migration programmes with China. IOM and China first established contacts over a decade ago and since 2001, China has been an observer state of IOM.

In Pakistan, Ms. Pandya said the government of Pakistan's local and district-level capacity to prepare and respond to disasters, such as last year's devastating earthquake, would be bolstered by a financial contribution from the American International Group Disaster Relief Fund of $ 1,016,627.82.