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Occupied Arab Territories in Political Turmoil;
 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenges world leaders to scale up efforts in the fight against AIDS; The International Labour Organization says more than 36 million workers have HIV; The Decolonization Committee is told there's a need for more support for political education in the dependent territories; The UN Resident Coordinator in the Eastern Caribbean says the Millennium Development Goals are an excellent tool for translating policies into practice; The International organization for Migration says trafficking may be contributing to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean
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UN Secretary-General Calls on World leaders to Take a Stand against AIDS The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has reiterated his call to world leaders to take a stand against the HIVAIDS epidemic. Speaking to reporters on a wide range of issues, he sad the recent Bangkok AIDS conference helped to raise awareness of the pandemic around the world. He said the infection rates are staggering, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. He pointed out however that the epidemic is also on the rise in other places. Mr. Annan recalled that 20 million people have been killed by this disease in the last twenty years: "Five and a half million of the people were killed in the last three years alone. This is a global problem without frontiers of any kind. It's everyone's problem. And its urgent. The futures of entire societies hang in the balance" The Secretary-General
said $12 billion will have to be spent next year to tackle the pandemic
but so far less than half of that amount is available.
UN Envoy Says Security Is Still A Problem for People in Darfur The
UN Secretary-General's envoy for Sudan, Jan Pronk has stressed the
need for the Sudanese government to implement all the commitments
it made recently to alleviate the plight of internally displaced people
or IDPs in the troubled Darfur region. In a recent accord with the
United Nations, the government pledged, among other things, to allow
access by humanitarian workers, to deploy a strong police force in
Darfur and to start disarming the janjaweed militias who are attacking
and pillaging villages. Mr. Pronk told reporters at the United Nations
that progress has only been in the area of humanitarian access:
Jan Pronk briefed
the Security Council on efforts to end the humanitarian crisis in
Sudan.
General
Assembly Demands Israel Compliance with World Court There are continuing reactions to the decision of the General Assembly to demand that Israel comply with the ruling by the International Court of Justice that the construction of a barrier in and around the West Bank is illegal. The Assembly adopted a resolution late on Tuesday by an overwhelming majority of 150 votes in favour to six against and ten abstentions. The resolution was presented by Jordan on behalf of the Arab States. The United Kingdom, as a member of the European Union voted in favour of the resolution. Its Ambassador is Emyr Jones Parry:
UN Nuclear Watchdog Plans to Send Inspectors to Iraq The
International Atomic Energy Agency is planning to inspect remaining
nuclear materials in Iraq this month. The agency says the inspection
is at the request of Iraq's Foreign Minister and is separate from
Security Council inspections which ended in mid March last year shortly
before the war. The UN nuclear watchdog says it wants to ensure that
Iraq conforms to its safeguard obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. This is not the first time that the IAEA has conducted such
inspections in Iraq. Last year it sent a team to determine how much
nuclear material was missing following reports of looting at the Tuwaitha
Nuclear Research Centre.
Repatriation of Sierra Leonean Refugees Draws to End The UN High Commissioner
for Refugees is concluding its programme to repatriate refugees from
Sierra Leone. Hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans fled mainly
to Liberia and Guinea during the decade-long conflict that ended in
2000. UNHCR says the final convoy from Liberia carrying close to 300
refugees crossed over the Mano River bride in Sierra Leone on Wednesday.
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"But
there is no progress whatsoever as far as the security of the people
themselves is concerned, in particular the situation with regard to
the janjaweed, the security of the IDPs and also the question of the
relocation of IDPs"
"Well
I thought the message out of the General Assembly resolution was fairly
clear. It was that we rallied at the proposition that the advisory
opinion was, in our view, correct, that the wall as constituted was
illegal. We call upon the government of Israel to react to that".