UN Gazeti

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Issue No. 274

UN Observances

UN IN AFRICA

SECURITY COUNCIL RENEWS MANDATE OF UN MISSION IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE AHEAD OF POLLS

The Security Council yesterday extended the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) by another six months, stressing the importance that much delayed presidential elections now slated for November are conducted in a free, fair and transparent manner.

In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council renewed UNOCI’s mandate – and that of the French forces supporting it – through 31 January next year.

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

UN-AFRICAN UNION MISSION IN DARFUR FACES CRITICAL SHORTAGES

The head of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) says he concurs with a report by a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that the operation faces critical shortages in troops, personnel, equipment and logistics.

Rodolphe Adada thanked the compilers of the report, the Darfur Consortium, which represents more than 50 NGOs focused on the Darfur crisis, for “adding its voice to that of UNAMID’s leadership in urging the international community to live up to its commitments and facilitate the Mission to implement its mandate,” in a statement released yesterday.

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

UN MISSION HELPS INVESTIGATION INTO ASSAULTS AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN DR CONGO

A human rights team with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has travelled with Congolese officials and doctors to investigate reports of mass rapes, looting and torture carried out by a group of Maï Maï militiamen last year.

The UN human rights team were accompanied last week by magistrates, lawyers and doctors who took statements and testimonies, as well as examined victims, in relation to the alleged attacks, which took place in the village of Lieke Lesole, some 360 kilometres north-east of Kisangani in Orientale province in north-eastern DRC.

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

MADAGASCAR MAKING GOOD PROGRESS IN POST-CYCLONE RECOVERY

The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has lauded the Government and people of Madagascar for the progress made so far with recovery and reconstruction following the deadly cyclone that battered the Indian Ocean island nation in February.

With winds of up to 190 kilometres per hour, Cyclone Ivan was one of the biggest to hit the island, which is prone to frequent cyclones and tropical storms. More than 160,000 were affected in the four districts that bore the brunt of the storm.

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UN SCALING UP FOOD AID FOR WEST AFRICANS STRUGGLING AMID RISING PRICES

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has announced it is expanding operations in West Africa to feed an additional 1.4 million people who are struggling due to high food prices in Guinea, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burkina Faso and Senegal.

“WFP is taking vital steps to ensure the poorest people in West Africa are not pushed over the edge by the impact of high food prices,” said Thomas Yanga, WFP’s Regional Director for West Africa, adding that WFP’s efforts are designed to complement government responses already in place.

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

UN GOODWILL AMBASSADOR HELPS BOOST MATERNAL HEALTH IN GUINEA-BISSAU

The first brick in the construction of a maternity surgical unit has been laid in eastern Guinea-Bissau by Catarina Furtado, a well-known Portuguese actress and television personality who is also Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

At the groundbreaking ceremony in the town of Gabu on Friday, Ms. Furtado noted the importance of the project for the reduction of maternal mortality in Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest and least developed countries.

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

INVESTIGATORS NEEDED TO VERIFY DARFUR BOMBING REPORTS

A joint team of military, police, human rights and civil affairs officers should be set up to investigate reports of Sudanese Government bombings of former rebel positions in Darfur, the military chief of the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission to the strife-torn region said on Monday.

General Martin Luther Agwai, the Force Commander of the mission (known as UNAMID), said the investigation team should be established as soon as possible to fly to the affected areas as the roads are impassable during the current rainy season.

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

POLICE IN SIERRA LEONE ADOPT UN-DRAFTED GUIDELINES ON SEXUAL ABUSE

Sierra Leonean police have adopted new policy guidelines on sexual abuse and exploitation that have been drafted by United Nations officials as part of their efforts to reduce the widespread levels of violence against women and girls in the West African country.

The policy guidelines, the first in the region, were drafted by the conduct and discipline office, the gender adviser and the UN Police section of the UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL), according to a statement issued in Freetown by the office on Saturday

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

 UN AROUND THE WORLD

SIGNIFICANT GAINS IN PREVENTING HIV, BUT NOT ENOUGH

While there have been significant gains in preventing new HIV infections in a number of heavily-affected countries and reducing the number of AIDS-related deaths, the epidemic is far from over in any part of the world, says a new United Nations report released yesterday.

The 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic, produced by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), is the most comprehensive review of the epidemic to date with 147 countries reporting data on HIV.

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

NEW UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF SPEAKS OF PERSONAL UNDERSTANDING OF DISCRIMINATION

The newly appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says she comes to her work with a personal understanding of human rights violations, based on her experience of living in South Africa during the apartheid regime when non-whites such as herself suffered from institutionalized discrimination.

“I think I come with a real understanding of what it’s like to have your human rights violated and to have it violated for a very long time without any justice in sight, and the apartheid struggle taught that,” Navanethem Pillay said yesterday in an interview with UN Radio.

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

ONLY POLITICAL WILL CAN BRING LASTING PEACE, OUTGOING UN PEACEKEEPING CHIEF SAYS

Lasting peace after armed conflicts can only be achieved when there is genuine political will applied by the parties involved, and not simply when a United Nations force has intervened, the outgoing chief of the world body’s peacekeeping operations said yesterday.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, who will be replaced by fellow Frenchman Alain Le Roy when he steps down after almost eight years as Under-Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Operations, told reporters in New York that “the notion that you can enforce a peace is wrong.

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

PROSPECTS FOR REUNIFYING CYPRUS HAVE NEVER BEEN BETTER

The outlook for resolving the long-running dispute on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus looks promising given recent events, including last week’s announcement by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders that they will hold full-fledged talks in early September, a senior United Nations envoy said yesterday.

“Developments over the past months have fostered a genuine sense that prospects have perhaps never been better to achieve a comprehensive settlement favourable to all Cypriots,” the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser, Alexander Downer, told a news conference in Nicosia.

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

DEVELOPING NATIONS STILL PLAYING CATCH-UP WITH RICH COUNTRIES

Poorer nations, which are home to the majority of the world’s population, are still struggling to break the dominance of their richer counterparts in the global economy, according to a report released yesterday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

In its 2008 Handbook of Statistics, the Geneva-based UNCTAD said that industrialized nations such as the United States and Japan accounted for more than 70 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) last year, even though they have only 15 per cent of the world’s population.

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

SG STRESSES FINANCIAL AS WELL AS HUMAN BENEFITS OF AVOIDING ARMED CONFLICTS

Preventing or resolving armed conflicts through political solutions and negotiations provides vital economic benefits to go with avoiding the enormous human costs extracted by war, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a gathering of Islamic scholars yesterday.

In a message to the Third International Conference of Islamic Scholars, held in Jakarta, Mr. Ban stressed the need for the United Nations to work ever more closely with Member States, regional organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others to try to prevent conflicts from emerging or continuing.

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

DSG CALLS ON ACADEMICS TO PLAY ROLE IN ACHIEVING GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT TARGETS

Academia can and should play a critical role in helping United Nations Member States to achieve the globally agreed anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, the Deputy Secretary-General said yesterday.

Addressing the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where she has studied and lectured, Asha-Rose Migiro said the MDGs – including commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger, slash maternal mortality and fight diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria – are realistic targets that can be reached with sufficient will and resources.

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

WAISTLINES EXPANDING AS MEDITERRANEANS SHUN HEALTHY DIET

Hailed by experts as keeping people slim, healthy and long-lived, the Mediterranean diet has followers all over the world – but is increasingly disregarded around the region, according to a senior economist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Josef Schmidhuber says that over the past 45 years the famed diet revolving around fresh fruit and vegetables has “decayed into a moribund state” in its home area.

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

UN AIMS TO HAVE HISTORIC AFGHAN CITY OF BAMIYAN MINE-FREE BY OCTOBER

The United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA) has announced plans to clear a total of 1,800,000 square metres of land in the historic city of Bamiyan that is contaminated with mines and unexploded ordinance (UXOs) by October.

Bamiyan contains a number of Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as fortified edifices from the Islamic period. It is also where the Taliban destroyed two standing Buddha statues in March 2001.

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

SG DEPLORES SERIES OF DEADLY BOMBINGS IN INDIA

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has strongly condemned the series of bombings that struck two Indian cities in recent days, killing and wounding numerous civilians.

Nearly 50 people have reportedly been killed and over 100 wounded as a result of the 17 blasts which struck residential areas, market places, public transport and hospitals within an hour on Saturday in the western city of Ahmedabad. That attack came a day after several devices went off in the southern city of Bangalore, killing two people.

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

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