UN Gazeti

Wednesday 04 July 2007

Issue No. 228

UN Observances

UN IN KENYA

UN DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL ASHA-ROSE MIGIRO VISITS KENYA

The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro arrived in Nairobi yesterday 3 July for her first visit in her new capacity. Mrs. Migiro arrived in Nairobi from Accra, Ghana, where she was attending the African Union Summit.

In Nairobi, the Deputy Secretary-General will meet with Government of Kenya officials, attend the International Women’s Summit on HIV/AIDS, visit a school in Kibera and see for herself the challenges facing the UN as it tries to ensure the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are achieved in the country. Coinciding with her visit is the visit of the Dr Margaret Chan Director-General of the WHO and Dr Peter Piot UNAIDS Executive Director.

For more information, visit: http://www.unicnairobi.org/default.asp

KENYA 2007: CHANGING LIVES, CHANGING COMMUNITIES

Hosted by the World YWCA, the International Women’s Summit on Women’s Leadership on HIV, brings together over 1500 people, including global leaders, high level policy makers, celebrities, community health workers and AIDS activists from 4th to 7th July to develop strategies, skills and partnerships in response to the impact of AIDS on women and girls.

This first ever International Summit of its kind addresses the impact of AIDS on women and girls, explores issues such as poverty, violence against women, children’s rights and access to decision-making and resources.

The event is organized by the World YWCA and co-convened with the International Community of Women Living with HIV, and has the support of the UNAIDS Global Coalition on Women and AIDS and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

For more information, visit: http://www.unicnairobi.org/default.asp

UN AGENCIES SEEK FUNDS TO HELP HUNGRY REFUGEE CHILDREN IN KENYA

Three United Nations agencies yesterday sought $32 million from donors to help cut malnutrition rates which they warned have reached “crisis levels” among children under five living in refugee camps in Kenya.

A total of 237,000 refugees, mostly Somalis and Sudanese, live in camps at Dadaab and Kakuma, where the acute malnutrition rate among children under five years of age is above the emergency level of 15 per cent, according to a news release from the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which is launching the appeal with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“One in every five children under the age of five is so malnourished that they need special care, and some of them will die. This can’t go on,” said Marian Read, WFP deputy country director.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

UN IN AFRICA

UN-HABITAT JOINS IN CLOSURE AND CLEAN-UP OF UGANDAN IDP CAMPS

With the security situation improving in Northern Uganda, UN-HABITAT is working with thousands of homeward-bound Internally Displaced Persons to clean up the camps in which they sought refuge for years from insurgents of a movement called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

UN-HABITAT, in partnership with German NGO, Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), has started to phase out camps in the town of Barr as part of a wider closure campaign funded by USAID in collaboration with UNHCR and Christian Children’s Fund (CCF).

In Lira district, where Barr is situated, there are around 12 camps, and each home to many thousands of people. In Barr alone, more than 32,000 people had set up camp, while neighbouring Ogur the figure was over 42,000. They had fled their homes in 2003 to escape insurgents of the LRA which has wreaked havoc on the lives of civilians in northern Uganda for nearly two decades, killing many thousands. Many LRA members, abducted as children, are forced to fight or used as sex slaves in one of East Africa’s bloodiest conflicts.

For more information, visit: http://www.unhabitat.org/

AFRICAN CRISES SET TO TOP SECURITY COUNCIL AGENDA THIS MONTH

The crises and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East are expected to dominate the agenda at the Security Council this month, its President for July, Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, said yesterday.

Briefing journalists on the Council’s programme of work, Mr. Wang noted that more than 50 per cent of the items on the provisional agenda related to Africa, from Sudan’s Darfur region and Somalia in the east to Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire in the west to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the central south.

The report of last month’s Council mission to Africa is also scheduled to be formally debated late next week.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

SUDANESE OFFICIALS AND UNICEF TEAM UP TO FIND FAMILIES FOR ABANDONED CHILDREN

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Sudanese authorities have launched a campaign to prevent people from abandoning infants and to find temporary families to avoid placing the children in institutions.

A joint assessment carried out in 2003 by the Government and UNICEF found that an estimated 100 newborns were being abandoned on the streets of the capital Khartoum every month. “Half of these were dying on the streets, the others left with no alternative but institutional care,” the agency stated in a press release issued yesterday.

These “alarming statistics” led the Ministry of Social Affairs for Khartoum State and UNICEF to develop a pilot programme to move away from institutional care towards the placement of children with alternative families.

 For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

EX-MILITIA MEMBERS IN DRC’S ITURI DISTRICT TO BEGIN DEMOBILIZING

The disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme for former members of three militia groups in the volatile Ituri district of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will start next week, the United Nations peacekeeping mission to the country (MONUC) has announced.
Under the scheme, to be run by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), about 4,500 ex-combatants from the militias will be registered, asked to hand over their arms and then given assistance to reintegrate into either civilian life or the national armed forces.

UNDP expects that about 70 per cent of the combatants – from the militias Mouvement Revolutionnaire Congolais (MRC), the Front de Résistance Patriotique de l’Ituri (FRPI) and the Front des Nationalistes et Intégrationnistes (FNI) – will choose civilian life, while 30 per cent will retrain for the new integrated brigades of the armed forces.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

SECURITY COUNCIL URGES OPPOSING CENTRAL AFRICAN GROUPS TO HOLD DIALOGUE

The Security Council yesterday called on authorities in the Central African Republic (CAR) to hold a dialogue with the country’s opposition forces and civil society groups amid mounting concern at the continuing violence and instability in the impoverished country.

Council members, who heard a briefing from Lamine Cissé, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative and the head of the UN Peacebuilding Support Office in the country (BONUCA), also said they remain willing to consider deploying a multi-dimensional UN mission to the northeast of the CAR and to neighbouring Chad.

In a statement to the press, Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month, said the 15-member panel was encouraging dialogue between the Government and others to try to consolidate peace and stability in the country.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

UN, AU OFFICIALS MEET WITH NON-SIGNATORIES TO DARFUR PEACE ACCORD

Senior officials from the United Nations and the African Union (AU) have met with the non-signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) to discuss next steps in the political process aimed at ending hostilities in the strife-torn region of Sudan, the UN Mission in the country said yesterday.

Over the past week, the UN-AU Joint Mediation Support Team, led by the UN’s Pekka Haavisto and the AU’s Sam Ibok, has held talks with groups based in North Darfur and in Asmara, according to the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).

The DPA, which covers security, wealth-sharing and power-sharing, was signed in May 2006 between the Sudanese Government and part of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) with the aim of ending the fierce fighting in Darfur.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

UN AROUND THE WORLD

AFGHANISTAN’S ‘LONG NIGHT OF INJUSTICE’ NEARING ITS END

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday urged Afghanistan’s partners to join hands with the fledgling democracy as it attempts to establish the foundations of law and order following decades of conflict, declaring that the country’s “long night of injustice is nearing its end.”
“Now we must herald the rule of law, and the era of the Afghan citizen,” Mr. Ban stated in his address to an international conference on justice and rule of law in Afghanistan taking place in Rome.

Recalling his surprise visit to Afghanistan last Friday, during which he met with the country’s top officials, Mr. Ban said he was “heartened and moved” by their commitment and courage, but also shared their profound concern over the challenges still confronting the war-torn nation.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

GUATEMALA SHOULD ACT ON PROPOSED BODY TO PROBE ARMED GROUPS

With talks underway in Guatemala’s Congress on a proposed independent body to investigate illegal armed groups, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday voiced hope that the country will take “this important opportunity” to fight impunity.

Under a December 2006 agreement between the Government and the UN, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (to be known as CICIG, its Spanish acronym) will have an initial mandate of two years, pending approval by the Congress.

Mr. Ban hopes that Guatemala “will seize this important opportunity to use international assistance to strengthen its national judicial institutions in the fight against impunity in a way that is fully respectful of Guatemalan sovereignty,” said his spokesperson in a statement.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

BRAZIL OFFERS RESETTLEMENT FOR PALESTINIAN REFUGEES FROM IRAQ, UNHCR SAYS

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday welcomed an offer by Brazil to resettle an estimated 100 Palestinians formerly living in Iraq starting in mid-September.

The agency is “grateful for a generous offer by the Government of Brazil” to help roughly 22 Palestinian families settle in Sao Paulo state and 18 families in the Rio Grande do Sul, spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told a press briefing in Geneva.

Apart from Canada and New Zealand, in recent years Brazil has been the only country to offer resettlement to Palestinian refugees from Iraq, according to UNHCR, which has been spotlighting their plight.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

UN OUTLAWS USE OF RUBBER BULLETS IN KOSOVO AND CONSULTS ON POSSIBLE WIDER BAN

The United Nations Police chief in Kosovo has banned the use of rubber bullets by any police unit in the UN-run province, he said yesterday, adding that Member States who contribute officers are also being consulted about outlawing their use in all other peacekeeping operations.

Police Commissioner Richard Monk’s remarks follow the deaths in February of two protesters who were killed when members of a Romanian Formed Police Unit (FPU) fired rubber bullets. His comments also come a day after a UN official investigating the deaths called for a “thorough review” of the use of rubber bullets.

“As regards the rubber bullets themselves, shortly after my arrival, I sent to UN Headquarters in New York a request that rubber bullets be withdrawn from the armoury of any state supplying Formed Police Units (FPU) to Kosovo,” Mr. Monk told a press conference organized by the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

SG PLEDGES UN SUPPORT TO BOOST DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN CARIBBEAN

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday commended efforts to foster a single Caribbean market while pledging the commitment of the United Nations to mitigating the effects of climate change in the region.

In a message at 28th Meeting of the Conference of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Mr. Ban emphasized that its members play a crucial part in furthering the UN’s agenda of peace, development and human rights in the region.

The initiative to create a single Caribbean market “promises to boost economic growth across the region and to provide a sound foundation for sustainable development,” said Mr. Ban.

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

TOP UN OFFICIAL WELCOMES IDENTIFICATION OF MISSING PERSONS IN CYPRUS

The top United Nations official in Cyprus has welcomed the announcement by the Committee on Missing Persons concerning the positive identification of the bodies of 28 missing persons and its plans to start returning the remains to the families concerned.

Michael Møller, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Cyprus, urged everyone to exercise due restraint during this “sensitive and emotional time” and respect the privacy of the affected families.

Mr. Møller extended the sympathy of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), which has been deployed on the island for the past 43 years, to the families concerned, and voiced hope that they would find “relief and solace after so many years of uncertainty about the fate of their relatives.”

For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

For more information on the United Nations and its activities, please visit the main U.N website at www.un.org or the U.N Kenya website at www.un-kenya.org