UN Gazeti

Wednesday 26 July 2007

Issue No. 231

UN Observances

UN IN KENYA

LAUNCH OF THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES REPORT 2007

The least Developed Countries Report 2007 was launched on Thursday 19 July 2007. The Report focused on national and international policies to promote knowledge as a catalytic input to the development of productive capacities in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
Since the year 2000, UNCTAD’s Least Developed Countries Report has argued that there are two possible future scenarios for the 767 million people who now live in the poorest countries in the world.

This year’s report focuses on how LDC Governments and their development partners can promote technological progress in LDCs as part of their efforts to develop domestic productive capacities. It is a contribution to promoting one of the extreme scenarios, that it is possible to envisage a progressive transition in which sustained and accelerated economic growth is achieved through the development of productive capacities, and that with the associated expansion of productive employment opportunities, there will be substantial poverty reduction. In that scenario, foreign aid supports development rather than “fire fighting” complex humanitarian emergencies.

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

UN IN AFRICA

VIOLENCE IMPEDES RELIEF EFFORT IN DARFUR, WFP WARNS

Condemning a sharp escalation in attacks on humanitarian staff and relief convoys in Sudan's Darfur region, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that violence is hampering its ability to deliver assistance to millions of hungry people there.

“In the last two weeks, nine food convoys have been attacked by gunmen across Darfur,” said Kenro Oshidari, WFP Sudan Representative. “WFP staff and contractors are being stopped at gunpoint, dragged out of their vehicles and robbed with alarming frequency.”

Mr. Oshidari called on all parties to the conflict in Darfur to guarantee the safety of humanitarian workers so that the UN food agency and other aid organizations can continue helping Sudanese who rely on outside assistance for survival.

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

UN HUMANITARIAN CHIEF SPOTLIGHTS IMPACT OF DROUGHT ON SOUTHERN AFRICA

The top United Nations humanitarian official yesterday, highlighting the impact of severe droughts in several southern African countries, stressed that the situation is particularly dire in Swaziland and appealed for over $15 million to assist that country.

“We’re anticipating quite serious problems of food insecurity” in the region, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said at a press briefing in New York.

Swaziland was hit by the worst drought in 15 years and its maize harvest of 26,000 metric tons was the poorest ever. While the country’s Government has pledged over $20 million to respond to the situation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is appealing for an additional $15.6 million to address needs over the next few months.

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

UN MISSION HELPS TRAIN SIERRA LEONEAN ELECTION OFFICIALS

The United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) and the National Electoral Commission have finished training nearly 50 district officers, ahead of next month’s presidential and parliamentary polls in the once war-torn West African nation.

The three-day training focused on polling and counting procedures for the 11 August elections, which are widely regarded as a watershed in democratic development for a country that is still recovering from an 11-year long civil war.

The training covered areas such as sorting and counting of ballot papers, confirmation of serial numbers on ballot boxes, and reconciliation of the votes cast and the number of registered voters, according to a press release issued by UNIOSIL.

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

LACK OF CASH THREATENS SCHOOL MEALS IN BENIN, WARNS WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) yesterday warned that tens of thousands of children in Benin will not receive their daily school meal when schools reopen in September unless additional funds are made available immediately.

WFP Benin’s school feeding programme, which reached nearly 70,000 school children in 400 schools last year, urgently requires $1 million – the equivalent of 1,200 metric tons of maize, beans, oil and fish.

“We are afraid that there won’t be any WFP food trucks turning up at the schools next term, and if the trucks don’t come, many of the children don’t come either,” said WFP Benin Country Director Jacques Roy. “We need new donations now so that we have time to buy the food and then get it out to the schools.”

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

UNHCR LAUNCHES $48 MILLION APPEAL FOR SOMALIS FLEEING VIOLENCE

Hoping to gain access to more Somalis who have been forced to flee recent violence in their country, the United Nations refugee agency has appealed for $48 million to alleviate their plight.
The funds will be used to provide “badly needed assistance for newly arrived Somali refugees fleeing renewed conflict in Somalia, and people displaced inside Somalia,” Jennifer Pagonis, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a press briefing in Geneva.

She estimated that the number of Somalis in the region who will receive assistance from UNHCR under the appeal will rise from the current 312,000 to 478,000 by end 2008.

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

ETHIOPIA: TOP UN RIGHTS CHIEF HAILS RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights yesterday welcomed the recent pardon and release of over three dozen political leaders and activists in Ethiopia and urged fair proceedings for dozens of other defendants still on trial.

“The pardons by the Government of Ethiopia are commendable,” Louise Arbour said in a statement released in Geneva on last Friday's of action concerning 38 persons.
“They are significant for what they represent in terms of the expansion of the democratic space in Ethiopia and prospects for national reconciliation.”

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

UN AROUND THE WORLD

NEPAL’S PEACE PROCESS ON TRACK BUT CHALLENGES REMAIN – SG

The ongoing peace process in Nepal appears on track to deliver peace and stability, but the national political scene there become more complex and challenging in recent months, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in a new report, urging efforts to maintain the positive momentum.

“Renewed and expanded efforts will have to be made to sustain the successful trajectory of the peace process,” Mr. Ban states in his latest report on Nepal, where a peace accord signed last November formally ended a decade-long conflict that killed an estimated 13,000 people.

Among recent challenges, Mr. Ban cited the postponement of the Constituent Assembly election, which was originally scheduled for mid-June but is now slated for 22 November because regulations governing the process were not ready in time.

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

FOLLOWING QUAKE, JAPAN INVITES IAEA TEAM TO ASSESS NUCLEAR PLANT

After receiving an invitation from Japan, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced yesterday that it will send a team of experts to the Asian country which was rocked by a powerful earthquake on 16 July.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei welcomed the invitation to jointly examine the current condition of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, located on the northern coast of Japan’s largest island Honshu.

He noted that this invitation is crucial for identifying lessons learned which could potentially have implications for nuclear safety worldwide.

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

TOP UN ENVOY ON MYANMAR KICKS OFF TRIP TO RUSSIA, EUROPE

Arriving in Moscow on Monday 23 July, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, began a weeklong trip that will also take him to several European capitals.
In Russia, Mr. Gambari is scheduled to hold consultations with senior Government officials, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York.

He will then stop in Paris, Brussels and London for additional meetings with Government and European Union counterparts.

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

UN OFFICIALS MOURN PASSING OF MOHAMMAD ZAHIR SHAH, ‘FATHER OF AFGHANISTAN’

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his senior envoy to Afghanistan on Monday 23 July mourned the passing of His Majesty Mohammad Zahir Shah, considered the father of the nation, at the age of 92.

In a statement released by his spokesperson, Mr. Ban paid tribute to the late monarch, who reigned over a “long period of peace and development.”

Mr. Ban noted that the King had been responsible for adopting a Constitution in 1964 “that was a model of tolerance, as well as a synthesis of the best of Islamic and modern political thought.”

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

TWO BOSNIAN SERB PARAMILITARIES TO BE TRIED JOINTLY AT UN WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has decided that, in the interest of justice, two Bosnian Serb paramilitaries charged with multiple crimes – and whose cases are factually very closely related – will be tried jointly.

On Friday 20 July, the Tribunal decided to revoke the referral of the Sredoje Lukic case to Bosnia and Herzegovina, thus clearing the way for it to be tried jointly in The Hague with the case of Milan Lukic, who would be “perhaps the most significant paramilitary leader tried by the Tribunal to date,” according to an ICTY press release.

In deciding to try the two men jointly, the Tribunal’s referral bench noted that “separate trials would have risked increasing the trauma for witnesses, who would have had to testify twice.”
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news

BAN KI-MOON URGES STRONGER GEORGIAN-ABKHAZ COOPERATION

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for the Government and Abkhaz sides in Georgia to bolster cooperation on security, economic and humanitarian issues.

In a new report to the Security Council made public on Monday 23 July, Mr. Ban says both sides “must now take concrete steps to implement the understandings” reached at a meeting last month of the “Group of Friends” on Georgia.

The two-day meeting in Bonn, Germany, was attended by senior representatives of the Group of Friends – which comprises France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – as well as the Georgian and Abkhaz sides and the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Georgia, Jean Arnault.

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

NEPAL: SECOND STAGE OF MONITORING OF MAOIST ARMY PERSONNEL TO RESUME – UN

The senior United Nations envoy to Nepal and the leader of the Maoists on Friday 20 July agreed on the resumption of the second phase of registration and verification of Maoist army personnel – to ensure that no minors are serving – as soon as possible.

Both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative Ian Martin, who also heads the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), and Maoist Chairman Prachanda were accompanied by political and military colleagues at their meeting in the Himalayan country.

Military representatives will commence meetings to confer on lessons learned from the verification at the Ilam cantonment site and will also talk about possibility reviewing disputed cases, UNMIN said in a press statement.

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

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