United Nations Daily Highlights, 98-03-18

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Wednesday, 18 March 1998

HEADLINES

• Beginning Middle East tour, Secretary-General visits family living in Palestinian refugee camp.
• Secretary-General reports progress in work of United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warns that violence in Kosovo threatens food security.
• In spite of financial crisis, top multinationals are confident of Asian economies, a worldwide survey finds.
• UNESCO warns that new globalized media may hurt local cultures, but it also offers potential education rewards.
• More than 10 million children in developing countries die each year of preventable ailments, says head of UNICEF.
• United Nations receives $1.7 million in seized crime assets from Luxembourg to support drug control.
• Secretary-General expresses profound regret at loss of lives in Tuesday's UN helicopter crash in Guatemala.
• United Nations humanitarian affairs office appeals for assistance to drought-stricken Guyana.

An unusual snowfall in Jordan forced the Secretary-General to change his schedule, which made it possible for him to tour two Palestinian refugee camps.

According to a United Nations information officer, the Secretary- General and his party were accompanied by Crown Prince Hassan and Princess Sarvath. Clad in boots and walking through snow flurries, the Secretary-General stopped at schools and clinics where he was briefed on the various services offered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

During the tour, the Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan stepped into a refugee family's home with the Crown Prince and Princess, where they sat on the ground and were offered a cup of coffee by a young mother of three. The Secretary-General chatted with the children, who told him of the living conditions in the camp.

Speaking to reporters later that day, the Secretary-General said he was thankful that the snow had diverted his schedule, giving him the opportunity to tour the refugee camps. He pledged to undertake fund- raising activities for UNRWA, which has been plagued by financial difficulties, and urged the international community to do its part in helping the agency.

Also while in Jordan, the Secretary-General attended an official meeting with the Crown Prince and other government officials who briefed him on the country's precarious water situation. Jordan has one of the lowest levels of water resources in the world, with a per capita consumption of less than 200 cubic metres per year.

In the afternoon, the Secretary-General held a one-on-one meeting with Crown Prince Hassan, who bestowed the "Al Nahda" Decoration on him.

In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first phase of police restructuring is finally nearing completion and the police in eight out of the 10 cantons have been inaugurated. However, restructuring in the other two Croat-dominated cantons is being held up by issues of a "purely political nature". The Secretary-General also reports that in Croat- majority areas, there are blocks to implementing recent election results and refugee returns. He says that efforts are being made to "make it clear to the Croat authorities that political obstacles to the implementation of election results, refugee return and police reform cannot be tolerated." He adds that a serious effort is needed to include Serb officers in the Federation police.

According to the report, UNMIBH plans to set up three special police units to deal with public security management, organized crime and drug control. In order to staff these units, the Secretary-General recommends increasing IPTF's total staff by 30 posts, to 2,057. He also calls for an increase of 26 additional UNMIBH professionals to facilitate judicial reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that in addition to its direct human consequences the violence in the region could result in a reduction of food output, supplies, and availability.

According to FAO, several farms have been destroyed, abandoned or untended, while food distribution has been constrained by difficulties in movement. Even in normal years, Kosovo remained a food-deficit area where output and productivity had been falling for several years because of conflict in the surrounding areas. Added to that were difficult terrain and poor soils, FAO pointed out. There had also been a significant decline in the use of essential farm products. Citing official records, FAO said that the aggregate wheat and maize production fell by more than 50 per cent from 700, 000 tonnes in 1991 to 310,000 tonnes in 1996.

FAO warned that livestock losses due to violence were likely to exacerbate the problems of food supply and income generation in households that heavily depended on these. The agency added that families on many subsistence farms remained additionally vulnerable to hardship as some of the men on which they depended had been killed or injured in the unrest.

Eighty people have died and thousands of others, mainly women and children, have been displaced as a result of the violence which recently erupted in Kosovo. The worst affected area is in the Srbica commune where approximately 10,000 people have moved to neighbouring communes of Mitrovice, Obiliq, Vushtrri and Lipjan. Others have fled to Montenegro to stay with their families.

A worldwide survey of leading multinational companies jointly conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) found that the region remained a destination for foreign direct investment.

The results are based on a survey, which was conducted in mid- February in the middle of the financial crisis in the region. Of the 500 companies polled, 198 responded. UNCTAD said the 40 per cent response rate was "impressive."

"The results clearly show that multinational corporations are keenly interested in the region for direct investment in the production of goods and services," said UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero.

One in four companies polled said it planned to increase direct investments over the short and medium terms, while 62 per cent said they were continuing with their existing plans. Almost all of the companies covered by the survey gave a thumbs up for long-term investment prospects. A large 81 per cent of them said the prospects remained unchanged, and 13 per cent said they had improved.

ICC Secretary-General Maria Livanos Cattaui characterized the results of the study as "a resounding vote of confidence in the economic fundamentals of East and South-East Asia and the region's long-term prospects." She added that foreign direct investment by its nature, required commitment over the long haul. "That commitment is fully demonstrated by the results of this survey."

According to UNCTAD, responses were remarkably consistent, both by main business sectors and also by home regions: Europe, North America, Japan and developing Asia. An overwhelming majority of respondents from each of the regions and the main sectors -- primary, manufacturing and services -- reported that their long-term views remained unchanged.

"History shows that the countries which fail to take advantage of the opportunities offered by these new technologies in the fields of information, electronic data processing and telecommunications will inevitably suffer slower development and decreased power of 'negotiation' in the new global communications landscape," according to the report. It cautions that countries which surrender to the mechanisms of the global market may lose their sense of identity and their culture.

"Developing countries are at risk from standardization of local cultures through a form of planetary brainwashing caused by the white noise of poor programme content," the report warns. Grave consequences may ensue, including the marginalization and possible disappearance of fragile community cultures and even the threat of violent inter-ethnic conflict.

On the positive side, the report states that, "the Internet offers infinite potential for training and education." The Internet already forms one of the greatest sources of information and documentation accessible anywhere on the planet. Several thousand scientific and technical publications can be consulted, generally free of charge or for a modest sum. The Internet enables university staff and researchers in developing countries lacking libraries and documentation centres to overcome their scientific and cultural isolation and remain in close contact with the international scientific community.

The report states that the main challenge ahead is to combine the fruitful tensions between the specific identities and cultural expressions of each country, the centrifugal forces of globalized markets, and common membership of the human species in all its diversity. "This is a tremendous challenge, calling for new action and dialogue, for negotiated, balanced, collective responses."

In a statement to a meeting of the World Bank in Washington DC, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that most of the children were "struck down by such perennial child killers as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles and malnutrition."

Ms. Bellamy told the World Bank Meeting on Vaccine Development and Delivery that other "scourges" were also involved, including HIV/AIDS which, she said, was emerging as a new cause of child mortality.

She urged the participants to make a choice between action and inaction. "In a $28 trillion global economy, it is clear that the question of economic resources is not the issue," she added. Quoting a report by UNICEF, Ms. Bellamy said that "a simple two-cent Vitamin A capsule," taken by a child deficient in that vitamin, could reduce her chance of dying from measles by 50 per cent and from diarrhoea by forty per cent.

The Executive Director of UNICEF also referred to some successes achieved in the immunization of children. She said that when the World Health Organization launched its expanded programme on immunization in 1974, less than five per cent of the world's children were immunized against the first six diseases that were targeted: diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, measles and tuberculosis. "Today, nearly eighty per cent of the 130 million children born each year worldwide receive vaccinations against illnesses before their first birthday," Ms Bellamy said.

Ms Bellamy stressed the need to provide financial assistance to the developing countries, particularly the heavily indebted poor countries to ensure the immunization of all young children as "a critical investment in the future."

Pino Arlacchi, the Executive Director of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, was in Luxembourg today where he signed an agreement with the country's government to receive $1.7 million dollars to support alternative development projects in Laos and Viet Nam.

"What's interesting here is that Luxembourg's contribution came from seized assets from drug-related crimes," United Nations Spokesman Juan Carlos Brandt told reporters in New York. He noted that this is in accordance with the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. "Luxembourg is the only country so far to comply with the Convention's call for seized assets to go to international drug control efforts," Mr. Brandt added.

While in Luxembourg, Mr. Arlacchi met for over an hour with Luc Freidan, the Minister of Budget and Justice, and Yves Mersch, the President of the Fund for the Fight against Drugs. They discussed issues of common concern, including the forthcoming General Assembly special session on international drug control (New York, 8 - 10 June).

A statement attributable to the Spokesman of the Secretary-General said that the five members who lost their lives in the service of the United Nations were from Australia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Spain and Uruguay.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed his profound regret to the four staff members who were wounded -- two of them critically -- in the crash. They were flown to the capital, Guatemala City.

The helicopter, used by the United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), crashed on a trip in the north of country. The statement said that the circumstances of the crash were still being investigated.

OCHA said that Guyana was facing unprecedented drought caused by the El Nino phenomenon which had reduced rainfall by as much as 90 per cent in September and October 1997. According to OCHA, there was a complete failure of the rainy season in mid-November 1997 to mid-January 1998 resulting in a severe shortage of drinking water.

The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said the most affected area was Georgetown, where the population was at risk of water- borne diseases as a result of drinking unsafe water. In the hinterland areas springs and wells had dried up, according to OCHA.

The drought has also severely affected agricultural production, reducing by 35 per cent the total area sowed with rice and sugar, which are major export crops. According to the Guyana Development Board, El Nino effects would cause rice production for the spring season to fall by 37 per cent and sugar production by 13 per cent. Approximately 11,000 people from rice and sugar growers' families which have invested resources in planting would have no yield to harvest.

The Government of Guyana has requested the United Nations Development Programme to assist in the evaluation of the impact of the drought and to prepare an action plan as well as to mobilize additional resources from the donor community.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

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