HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING
BY STEPHANE DUJARRIC
ASSOCIATE SPOKESMAN FOR THE
SECRETARY-GENERAL
OF THE UNITED NATIONS
UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK
Friday,
August 27, 2004
U.N. ENVOY VISITS
CAMPS, WITNESSES WEAPONS HANDOVER IN DARFUR
The
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan,
Jan
Pronk, just completed the second day of a three-day mission to
West Darfur, Sudan, to review the status of commitments undertaken by the Sudanese
Government in the Darfur
Plan of Action.
Pronk
and his verification team, comprising United Nations, Sudanese Government
and other representatives, visited camps housing internally displaced
persons and hospitals, including therapeutic centers for children, and met
with relief workers.
Pronk’s
team also witnessed the handover of weapons by some 200 members of the
People’s Defense Force affiliated with the Sudanese government, as part of
the disarmament program.
The
team is expected to complete its mission on Saturday and Jan Pronk is
expected to brief the Security Council
on his findings next Thursday.
The United Nations is asking
the international community for $166
million to address humanitarian needs in Chad until
the end of the year.
It had initially appealed for $54 million in March; and so far, current
contributions and pledges amount to $80 million, or almost half of the
revised requirements.
The UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that the needs
of UN High
Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), have
increased the most, with requested funds having shot up from $20 million to $105 million, because the number of refugees fleeing
from Darfur into Chad has steadily increased from 110,000 in March, to
200,000 at the end of July.
Separately, a team from the World
Health Organization will visit Chad to investigate hepatitis E cases in
camps for Sudanese refugees. The team
is expected to depart on Monday, August 30.
In a statement
issued today,
13 UN institutions operating in the occupied
Palestinian territory expressed concern about the hunger strike that
reportedly more than 2,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees have joined.
The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Terje
Roed-Larsen, calls on the Israeli authorities to comply with its
international obligations and to make every effort to find, with the
prisoners, an appropriate resolution to the hunger strike.
The UN agencies and offices remind Israel of its obligations under the
Fourth Geneva Convention and relevant international human rights instruments
which provide for the protection of detainees and prisoners.
Secretary-General
Kofi Annan supports the statement and hopes that the matter will be resolved soon in
a manner consistent with international humanitarian law.
In a statement
issued Thursday afternoon, the Secretary-General welcomed the efforts
by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to find a peaceful solution to the
situation in the holy city of Najaf, and was encouraged by reports that an
agreement to halt the armed hostilities in Najaf had been reached.
The
Secretary-General also voiced his great dismay at the violent incidents
Thursday in Kufa and other locations in Iraq
and expressed concern over the humanitarian situation created as a result of
the recent hostilities.
The
Secretary-General reiterates that the United Nations stands ready to assist
Iraqis in the transitional political process and calls upon them to resolve
their differences through peaceful means.
The threat
from al-Qaeda-related terrorism
remains as great as ever, but the nature of that threat has changed,
according to the first report from the monitoring team dealing with the
Security Council’s sanctions on al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The
Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team contends that, despite
international efforts, the threat from al-Qaeda terrorism remains as real
today as it has been at any time since October 1999. What has changed is
that al-Qaeda’s key leadership is too preoccupied with its own immediate
problems of survival to offer more than general guidance.
The team
says that al-Qaeda operations are not characterized by high cost. Only the
September 11 attacks required significant funding of over six figures, the
report adds.
Ambassador
Heraldo Muñoz of Chile, who chairs the
Security Council
Sanctions Committee that deals with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, will
hold a press conference on the report
on Monday at 11:15 a.m.
In Burundi,
UNHCR
has moved a group of 48
Congolese refugees in Burundi away from the insecure border area between the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi to Gasorwe camp in the
northeast of the country, where some 8,000 Congolese refugees from an
earlier influx are already sheltered.
Forty-seven
of those in the convoy were from two transit centers in Cibitoke province,
while one person was from the town of Gatumba. The Gatumba transit center,
where a massacre took place on August 13, is now closed, and refugees from
there are now sheltering in a school with increased security.
UNHCR and
its partners continue to organize shelter, food, water, health, sanitation
and other services for some 20,000 refugees now in the border area. UNHCR is
also starting an information program on the relocation for the refugees,
many of whom remain reluctant to relocate, because they want to return to
the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
as soon as they feel the situation is safe.
UNHCR says
that a humanitarian mission visiting Colombia's Middle San Juan River region
has found more than 600 previously unreported internally displaced people.
This was the first humanitarian mission to the area in
northwestern Colombia's Chocó province since fighting began between
left-wing and right-wing forces earlier this month.
UNHCR says the displaced people hadn’t been registered or
received assistance because of an economic blockade imposed by an irregular
armed group to keep essential goods out of their enemies' reach. Aid
agencies are now organizing relief assistance for the group, and sending a
health team to the area today.
UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund,
is urging Ugandan
civilian and military authorities responsible for receiving 47 formerly
abducted children to ensure their rights remain protected.
The children were repatriated today from Sudan after their abduction by
the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA.
UNICEF says one measure would be to grant the children direct passage to
NGO reception centers, so they can receive urgent medical care and begin the
process to be reunited with families.
While the latest repatriation was encouraging, the continued
targeting of children by the LRA for forced recruitment as combatants and
sex slaves remains a “cause for great distress," UNICEF says. Up to 12,000 children
in the conflict-affected districts of northern Uganda are estimated to have
been abducted by the LRA since June 2002.
The environmental situation in the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea is exacerbating that country’s existing problems. That
is one of the findings of the UN
Environment Programme’s first assessment
of North Korea’s environment.
The study found
that forests have declined, rivers and city air have become more polluted
and major crop yields have fallen dramatically due to land degradation and
natural disasters. The report provides recommendations for tackling these
problems.
NO SECURITY
COUNCIL MEETINGS SCHEDULED:
There are no meetings or consultations of the Security
Council scheduled for today.
FOUR-MEMBER
PANEL ON DR CONGO APPOINTED: A
letter from
the Secretary-General to the President of the Council announced his appointment
of four experts who are to report to the Council on the implementation of the
arms embargo in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. That group was given a mandate lasting until the end
of next January, in accordance with Council Resolution 1552.
ANGOLA PUSHES FOR
POLIO-FREE STATUS:
In the same week as three African countries were re-infected with polio, Angola
today takes another step towards being declared polio-free when it begins the
immunisation of five million (under five) children. Since January 2003, 12
previously polio-free countries have been re-infected, including Botswana, just
60 kilometers from Angola’s southern border.
UN
QUICK IMPACT PROJECT STARTS IN HAITI:
In Haiti,
the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Juan Gabriel Valdés, and
Force Commander Lieutenant-General Ribeiro Pereira launched the UN
Mission’s first Quick Impact Project on Thursday, for the reconstruction
of an elementary school building in Petion-Ville. The $14,000 project is one of
four reconstruction projects being undertaken by a peacekeeping brigade from
Brazil.
EVACUATION
DRILL HELD AT UN HEADQUARTERS:
At 10:00 this morning, there was an evacuation drill at UN Headquarters, during
which the more than 3,500 people present inside the building were briefly
evacuated. The entire evacuation was completed within 29 minutes, after which
all staff returned to the building. Asked about the reasons for the drill, the
Spokesman noted that there had been several such drills in recent years, and
that today’s drill had been scheduled to take place earlier in the summer, but
had been postponed until now.
THE WEEK AHEAD AT THE UNITED NATIONS
The 30-day
deadline set by Security Council Resolution 1556 ends, and a report on the
Sudanese Government’s progress in implementing the conditions of that
resolution is due.
At 11:15 a.m.,
Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile, the Chair of the Security Council Committee
dealing with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, will talk to the press concerning the
first report of that committee’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring
Team.
This is the
last day of the Russian Security Council Presidency.
Ambassador Juan
Antonio Yañez-Barnuevo of Spain assumes
the Presidency of the Security Council for the month of September.
In closed
consultations, the Security Council expects to receive a briefing from the
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk.
The Security
Council also expects to hold consultations on its program of work for September.
After that, Council President Juan Antonio Yañez-Barnuevo of Spain
is scheduled to
brief the press at 1:00 p.m. on the Council’s work.
Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General
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