UN Gazeti
Wednesday 27 February 2008
Issue No. 256
UN Observances
| 08 March |
International Women’s Day |
| 21 March February 2008 |
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination |
UN IN KENYA
KENYA YOUTH LAUNCH ANTI-VIOLENCE CAMPAIGN
Hundreds of young Kenyans gathered on Monday to launch a campaign aimed at getting their peers to refrain from post-election violence that has so far claimed some 1,000 lives and displacing almost 300,000 people around the country.
At a colourful ceremony in Nairobi, they vowed not to be used by politicians to fight proxy wars that have wreaked havoc in the country. “We cannot talk about peace, without addressing the problems of thousands of youth living in camps for the internally displaced,” the activist, Mr. Ndungi Githuku told a cheering audience.
For more information, visit: http://www.unhabitat.org/
UNHCR AIRLIFTS EMERGENCY SHELTER INTO KENYA
Ahead of March rains, the United Nations refugee agency is bringing 5,000 tents to Kenya for use by tens of thousands of people driven from their homes by the violence that has gripped the east African country since December’s contested elections.
Half the tents, which are light in weight and large enough for families, were flown in Friday from the Dubai stockpiles of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The others were being shipped from Dubai to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news/
KENYAN CRISIS DEMANDS BOTH IMMEDIATE AND LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS
International efforts to help Kenya recover from the unrest that started after election results were challenged in December should thoroughly address the root causes of the violence, but must first help resolve the political crisis as a matter of urgency, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official said on Monday.
“If there is no quick resolution to the political crisis, the risk of a fresh surge in violence, more displacement and further polarization of society will be very high,” John Holmes, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told the Security Council as he briefed them on his visit to the East African country from 8 to 11 February.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news/
UN IN AFRICA
ERITREA BLOCKING PASSAGE OF UN PEACEKEEPERS AS REGROUPING EFFORTS CONTINUE
Eritrean soldiers have blocked the passage of eight United Nations vehicles in the past 24 hours as the world body’s peacekeeping mission in the region continued to regroup staff and assets in the capital, Asmara, ahead of its planned temporary relocation across the border to Ethiopia.
According to the mission, known as UNMEE, the incidents occurred at a checkpoint near Senafe, inside the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) that divides the neighbouring East African nations which fought a bloody border war that ended in 2000.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN STARTS INITIATIVE TO IMPROVE MONITORING OF PRISON CONDITIONS IN SIERRA LEONE
Human rights officers with the United Nations peace mission in Sierra Leone will tomorrow begin holding a three-day training exercise to improve the standard of monitoring of prison conditions across the West African country.
Staff with the national human rights commission, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and independent rights monitors will benefit from the training programme, the UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) said yesterday in a press release issued in Freetown, the capital.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UNICEF TO HELP REBUILD LIBERIA’S DEVASTATED PRIMARY SCHOOLS
With only one third of Liberians reaching the fifth grade of school and children less likely to read than their parents, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) yesterday announced a $20 million programme to help rebuild the education system of the West African country, which was gutted during a long, brutal civil war.
“Reliable funding in the transition period following conflict is a major challenge,” said Ann Veneman, UNICEF’s Executive Director, who is making her first visit to the recovering nation. “This fund will enable children in Liberia to return to school and receive primary education that was previously inaccessible to them as a result of the 15-year civil war.”
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
DISPLACED DARFURIANS MOVING TO NEW CAMP, OTHERS FLEE TO CHAD
As violence continues to rage in Sudan’s Darfur region, a group of 500 villagers who fled their homes two weeks ago will find refuge at a newly opened camp outside El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, the United Nations refugee agency announced yesterday.
“The group, many of whom fled the village of Saraf Jedad to Armankul earlier this year, are part of a larger group of 222 families – some 1,000 people – who were displaced for a second time and are in need of emergency assistance,” William Spindler, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said at a press conference in Geneva.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN RE-STARTS STALLED REPATRIATION OF SUDANESE REFUGEES FROM WESTERN ETHIOPIA
The United Nations refugee agency has resumed its repatriation of Sudanese from a camp in western Ethiopia after the operation had been halted for nearly two months because of bureaucratic problems.
A convoy of vehicles carrying 605 people left Ethiopia’s Bonga camp for Sudan’s Blue Nile state at the weekend, expecting to reach their destination by yesterday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. Almost two thirds of the group were aged under 18.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
OVER 5,500 CHADIANS RELOCATED TO REFUGEE CAMP IN NORTH-EASTERN CAMEROON
More than 5,500 Chadians who fled fighting in their capital, N'Djamena, earlier this month and have been living in temporary sites in north-eastern Cameroon have now been relocated to a newly equipped camp in the village of Maltam, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.
Another 10,000 refugees are expected to be transferred to the camp from the town of Kousséri, which at one point was hosting some 30,000 Chadians – who left their homeland due to fighting between Government forces and armed opposition groups – in two temporary sites, as well as in local schools, churches and private homes.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
NEW ACCORDS IN EASTERN DR CONGO MUST AID DISPLACED PERSONS
Recent accords aimed at ending fighting in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are an opportunity to finally stop the horrific abuse of people displaced by that violence, an independent United Nations human rights official said following a 10-day visit to the troubled region.
“The recourse to peaceful solutions to the present conflicts, the renunciation of violence, the scrupulous respect by all actors of human and humanitarian rights and an unfailing fight against impunity are indispensable to put an end to the serious violations of human rights whose victims are the displaced people in the east of the DRC,” Walter Kälin, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Representative for the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), said in a preliminary statement on his trip.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UGANDA AND REBELS TAKE ANOTHER MAJOR STEP FORWARD TOWARDS PEACE DEAL
The Ugandan Government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have taken another major step forward in their peace process by signing a permanent ceasefire accord at the weekend, the United Nations envoy to the process reported on Monday.
The ceasefire deal, which will take effect after the signing of a final overall peace agreement, is fundamental for building peace in Uganda, said Mr. Chissano, who signed the accord in Juba, Southern Sudan, on Saturday on behalf of the UN.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
REGROUPING OF PEACEKEEPERS IN ERITREA CONTINUES UNHINDERED
The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) reports that the regrouping of its peacekeepers and equipment in Asmara continued without restrictions on Monday, as the world body still awaits Eritrea’s cooperation to move its personnel across the border to Ethiopia.
UNMEE decided earlier this month to relocate to Ethiopia after Eritrea cut off diesel fuel supplies to the mission, paralyzing its operations on that side of the boundary between the neighbouring East African nations which fought a bloody border war that ended in 2000.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN AROUND THE WORLD
WHO SAYS RESISTANT TUBERCULOSIS ON THE RISE
Rates of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis – which takes longer to treat and requires more expensive drugs that have potentially serious side effects – are at an all-time high, according to a new report by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).
The study, entitled “Anti-Tuberculosis Drub Resistance in the World,” is the largest ever on the scale of drub resistance and is based on information collected between 2002 and 2006 on 90,000 TB patients in 81 countries.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS NEEDS CHANGES ON THE GROUND TO SUCCEED
The Annapolis peace process deserves continued support but it will only be sustained if there are real changes on the ground, particularly in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, the senior United Nations envoy on the Middle East told the Security Council yesterday.
Robert H. Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told a Council meeting that “ordinary people understandably have little confidence that the political process is delivering,” whether they live in the occupied Palestinian territory or in southern Israel.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN LAUDS ‘INNOVATIVE’ NORWEGIAN ARCTIC VAULT SAFEGUARDING WORLD’S CROP SEEDS
The head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has hailed a vault built into a frozen mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard to protect seed samples from the threats of climate change, disease and disasters as “one of the most innovative and impressive acts in the service of humanity.”
Located near the village of Longyearbyen – some 1,120 kilometres from the North Pole – the Global Seed Vault will house duplicates of unique varieties of the world’s most important crops. Permafrost and thick rock will ensure that even without electricity, the genetic material stored in the vault will remain frozen and protected.
For more information please contact http://www.un.org/news
HALF OF GLOBAL POPULATION WILL LIVE IN CITIES BY END OF THIS YEAR
By the end of this year, half of the world’s 6.7 billion people will live in urban areas, according to a report unveiled by the United Nations yesterday, which also predicts that future growth of the world’s urban population will be concentrated in Asia and Africa.
The 2007 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects provides the official UN estimates and projections of the urban, rural and city populations of all countries in the world up to 2050.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA, GREECE TO HOLD UN-LED DISCUSSIONS
The United Nations envoy tasked with helping Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia resolve their dispute over the official name of the latter country will hold discussions with the two sides later this week as part of efforts to broker a solution.
Matthew Nimetz, the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, will have “continued discussions with representatves” of the two States in New York this Friday, UN spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
SG SAYS WE ‘CANNOT WAIT’ TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday kicked off a multi-year global campaign bringing together the United Nations, governments and civil society to try to end violence against women, calling it an issue that “cannot wait.”
“At least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Through the practice of prenatal sex selection, countless others are denied the right even to exist,” Mr. Ban said in his address at the opening in New York of the latest session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
GREEN INVESTMENT REQUIRES PREDICTABLE CARBON PRICE, MINISTERS AGREE AT UN MEETING
Predictable carbon pricing is needed to direct world investment flows toward an economy that could minimize climate change, close to 140 governments agreed on Monday as they concluded a major meeting on the subject in Monaco, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) says.
“Sufficiently high and long-term predictable price for carbon will be central for mobilizing capital for the new economy,” according to the summary by Roberto Dobles, Costa Rican Environment and Energy Minister and President of UNEP’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, which ended Friday, and discussed the theme of “Mobilizing Finance for the Climate Challenge.”
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
OVER 6 MILLION AFGHAN CHILDREN TO START NEW SCHOOL YEAR WITH UN SUPPORT
As more than 6 million children in Afghanistan prepare to start a new school year in a few weeks, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is working to ensure that both boys and girls in the strife-torn nation have access to quality education in a safe environment.
To prepare for the new school year which begins on 22 March, UNICEF is providing learning materials for students and teacher kits. It is also planning to support the Ministry of Education in constructing nearly 300 schools this year, training 48,000 teachers and developing textbooks and syllabi.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
DSG STRESSES ROLE OF PHILANTHROPY IN ACHIEVING GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Corporate giving can play an important role in advancing the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Deputy Secretary-General told more than 200 top executives and business leaders at a special event of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Monday.
“Enhanced cooperation between the different actors represented here on Monday, especially through a better understanding of corporate giving strategies, would add great value to the overall development effort,” Asha-Rose Migiro told the gathering of leaders from such companies as Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs & Co.
For more information, visit: http://www.un.org/news
UN APPEALS FOR $18 MILLION TO HELP BOLIVIAN FLOOD VICTIMS
The United Nations’ humanitarian wing has appealed for more than $18 million to provide relief to 300,000 Bolivians needing urgent assistance in the wake of deadly floods, mudslides and landslides.
Heavy rains have pummelled the Andean country since last November, claiming at least 52 lives and causing some communities to lose their livelihoods and income for the third year in a row, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Monday.
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
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