UN Gazeti
Wednesday 05 September 2007
Issue No. 237
UN Observances
UN IN KENYA
CONTINUED CLOSURE OF KENYA-SOMALIA BORDER HURTING LIVELIHOODS
Faith Karimi considered herself a moderately successful trader, exporting vegetables from Kenya to Somalia. Her lucrative trade, however, ground to a halt in January when the Kenyan government closed the border, fearing that escalating unrest in Somalia would spill over into Kenya.
"I am struggling to sell second-hand clothes and my three colleagues have gone back home to try their hand at farming," said the mother of three, who lives in Garissa town, the administrative headquarters of Kenya's Northeastern Province, which borders Somalia.
For more information, visit: http://www.irinnews.org
UN IN AFRICA
SG WELCOMES SUDANESE MOVE TO ALLOW ILL DARFURIAN LEADER TO TRAVEL.
The Sudanese Government has allowed the United Nations to arrange for the travel of a key Darfurian elder and former rebel group figure to Kenya for medical treatment, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced yesterday after meeting with Sudan’s President during his visit to the country.
Mr. Ban said the decision by President Omar al-Bashir to allow Suleiman Jamous, a former member of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), one of Darfur’s many rebel groups, to leave the country will “create conditions conducive to peace negotiations.”
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN ENVOY PRAISES AGREEMENT BETWEEN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
The senior United Nations envoy to Sierra Leone has welcomed the agreement of the leaders of the country’s two major political parties on measures to try to calm rising tensions ahead of this Saturday’s presidential run-off election.
Victor Angelo, the Secretary-General’s Executive Representative in Sierra Leone, issued a statement praising the agreement on the 3rd of September, a day after the President, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, brought together the two presidential candidates for talks.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN ENVOY ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT BEGINS VISIT TO CÔTE D’IVOIRE
The United Nations human rights envoy tasked with protecting the rights of children caught up in armed conflict yesterday began a visit to Côte d’Ivoire to assess the situation in the divided West African country.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, will focus particularly on the follow-up of action plans aimed at releasing children from armed groups and reintegrating them into their communities, UN spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
THOUSANDS MORE CIVILIANS FLEE NEW CLASHES IN EASTERN DR CONGO
Thousands of Congolese civilians are on the move in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) strife-torn North Kivu province, fleeing their homes amid reports of renewed fighting, cases of rape, and rising tensions between Government forces, renegade troops and rebel groups, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.
“We fear that the pursuit of a military solution to the problems in North Kivu would further worsen the province’s humanitarian crisis through the potential displacement of hundreds of thousands of additional Congolese civilians,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
ASHRAF QAZI NAMED AS NEW UN ENVOY FOR SUDAN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced yesterday that Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, currently his Special Representative in Iraq”, will become his new Special Representative for Sudan, where the United Nations is working to relieve the crisis in Darfur and to improve the post-conflict situation in the south of the vast country.
Mr. Qazi, from Pakistan, will succeed Jan Pronk of the Netherlands, who left the post last year.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
FUNDING SHORTFALL THREATENS UN FAMILY REUNIONS FOR WESTERN SAHARA REFUGEES
Threatened by an almost 50 per cent shortfall in funding, family reunion visits and other confidence-building measures connecting Sahrawi refugees in camps in Algeria and their relatives in the Western Sahara Territory risk coming to a halt next month, the United Nations refugee agency warned yesterday.
In January, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appealed for nearly $3.5 million to continue the family visits and telephone services initiated in 2004 for some 90,000 Sahrawi around Tindouf in western Algeria, where they sought shelter from the conflict between Morocco and the Frente Polisario independence movement, which contest the Western Sahara territory, a former Spanish colony.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN AROUND THE WORLD
SG KICKS OFF FIRST VISIT TO SUDAN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Sudan on the 3rd of September to “lock in progress” made so far to end the crisis in the country's strife-torn Darfur region and observe first-hand the situation on the ground ahead of the deployment of a massive joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping operation.
Mr. Ban's visit comes just weeks after the Security Council authorized a hybrid force, which will have some 26,000 peacekeepers at full deployment, to quell the violence in Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died and more than two million others forced to flee their homes since 2003 because of fighting between rebel groups, Sudanese Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
NEW UN REPORT UNDERSCORES TIES BETWEEN POVERTY AND PRODUCTIVITY
A new report by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) released yesterday highlights the linkage between poverty and labour productivity, noting that limited investment in training and skills is diminishing opportunities to lift people out of poverty.
“Productivity is the cornerstone for poverty alleviation,” Lawrence Jeff Johnson, ILO’s Chief of the Employment Trends Team, said at a press briefing at UN Headquarters in New York yesterday of the report, entitled “Key Indicators of the Labour Market,” also underscored the linkage between poverty and productivity.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN RUSHES AID AHEAD OF ANTICIPATED DAMAGE WREAKED BY HURRICANE FELIX
The United Nations has begun deploying aid and assistance to the areas in Central America expected to suffer from the destruction that Hurricane Felix – which made landfall in Nicaragua yesterday morning – could leave in its wake.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that Nicaraguan authorities suspended school in the town of Bilwi and evacuated other local communities, while temporary shelters have been built on higher ground in the area where the hurricane, which has since been downgraded from Category 5, struck. The agency estimates that as many as 50,000 families in the country could be affected by the hurricane.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
TIMOR-LESTE MAKING PROGRESS IN OVERCOMING LAST YEAR’S CRISIS, SAYS BAN KI-MOON
Despite the recent flare-up of tensions following the announcement of a new Government, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has commended Timor-Leste on overcoming the crisis of last year that led to the bolstering of the United Nations presence in the country which it helped shepherd to independence in 2002.
An indication of that progress is the successful completion of presidential and parliamentary elections with which the Timorese people “once again demonstrated their faith in democratic processes to move beyond internal divisions,” Mr. Ban writes in his latest report to the Security Council on the activities of the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) from 27 January to 20 August.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN-BACKED REPORT SPOTLIGHTS OBSTACLES FACED BY AFGHAN RETURNEES
Many Afghans returning to their homeland face a number of major challenges, including a lack of employment, health care, education and housing, according to an assessment carried out with the support of the United Nations refugee agency.
The findings are contained in “Economic and Social Rights in Afghanistan II,” the second report of its kind by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
SENIOR UN OFFICIAL HAILS LEBANESE SEIZURE OF REFUGEE CAMP
A senior United Nations official welcomed the Lebanese army’s full seizure over the weekend of the Nahr el-Bared camp, which has been the scene of months of intense combat with Fatah el-Islam gunmen.
“The Lebanese army has extinguished this serious threat posed by Fatah el-Islam to Lebanon’s independence, sovereignty and stability,” said UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Geir O. Pedersen said, noting that over 150 Lebanese soldiers died “to uphold these principles.”
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
SYRIA ASSURES UN IT WILL NOT FORCIBLY DEPORT IRAQI REFUGEES UNDER NEW VISA SYSTEM
The Syrian Government has assured the United Nations refugee agency that it does not intend to forcibly return Iraqi refugees, estimated at some 1.4 million, when it introduces new visa requirements.
In talks at the Foreign Ministry in Damascus, the Syrian capital, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) top protection official Erika Feller was told that the new visa restrictions arose from the fact that Syria’s ability to handle the influx is close to the breaking point.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN COUNTS ON FIELD COMMANDERS IN MEETING PEACEKEEPING CHALLENGES
With more peace operations, and more men and women in the field, than at any other time in the history of the United Nations, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro yesterday called on field commanders to help the world body meet the “daunting challenges of contemporary peacekeeping.”
Yesterday there are over 74,000 military personnel, from 117 troop-contributing countries, serving in 18 field missions on four continents. This unprecedented surge in UN peace missions has presented the Organization with a number of challenges.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
ANTI-CRIME DEMONSTRATORS
The top United Nations envoy to Kosovo yesterday voiced solidarity with demonstrators in the capital, Pristina, who marched against crime in response to last week’s murder of a police officer in the Serbian province administered by the world body since 1999.
“The murder of Kosovo Police Officer Triumf Riza is a heinous crime and a terrible tragedy,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative Joachim Rücker. “Indeed, his death has united Kosovo’s people against crime like no other event that I have witnessed here.”
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
‘EXTREMELY SERIOUS’ LOCUST INFESTATION IN YEMEN WORSENS IN AUGUST
The locust infestation in Yemen, already termed “threatening and extremely serious” last month, worsened during August as immature swarms of the crop-devouring insects formed in the interior and moved into the central highlands, with the possibility that they may now invade neighbouring countries, the United Nations warned in its latest update.
Some swarms remained in the interior where another generation of breeding is likely to occur while a few others moved to southern Oman, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported, in what has been called the worst locust infestation in Yemen in nearly 15 years.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
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